At Large

It was not too terribly long ago that the doldrums of winter, stretching through January and February, could be mitigated with one visit to the mailbox. Long nights and days of howling winds seemed to be on the menu day after day with the dejected weather forecasters droning on about “mostly cloudy and cold with a chance of snow.”

But then, without warning, it appeared.  

Stuffed in the mailbox in the depths of winter was the annual Burpee Seed Catalog, and it was suddenly “psychological spring.” That was the term crafted by marketing types who labored each year to find the right date to send the colorful pages filled with repurposed photos of towering tomato plants groaning with flaming red orbs, waves of deep green cucumbers ready for picking, and beds of marigolds and zinnias splashed with a flare of sunlight. Roses? Sunflowers? Lettuce? Summer squash? Page after page, they were all there in their glory.

We could lazily turn the pages, forget the dreary look outside the windows, and begin the process of deciding which seed packets should be sent our way, which flowers had done well last season, how many radishes we should plant, and which strain of beans would taste as good raw as they would in a casserole topped with those other worldly crispy fried onions.

As with so much of our electronically patterned lives, the seed catalog is now available online. The cost of mass printing and mailing has long since been eclipsed with the relative ease of taking the best work of a design team and making it available with the click of a button.

Don’t forget about all the shows

Aside from the annual seed catalog, there were certainly other components to the full-throated anticipation of the change of seasons and warm weather to come that appeared, quietly on the calendar, but loudly on television commercials designed to lure us outside of the comfort of our homes and eagerly into crowded parking lots and long snack bar lines. These endure. Boat shows. Home shows. Auto shows. Promoters fill gaping civic arenas with bumper-to-bumper motorhomes, the enticement of liberal financing, and the allure of a summer getaway. Nothing will brighten your outlook like the latest model of the family car. Act now and have that swimming pool or hot tub you’ve always wanted installed and ready to go by June.

But, alas, it is still March.  

The forecasts often nod towards good weather to come, but the fact remains that temperatures can still plunge, snow may still blanket our hills, and “black ice” will still be a concern. It will be months before the fields will be opened and the corn planted in the hope that “knee high by the Fourth of July” will hold again this year, and the crop will be good.

The earth stirs and waits

We are fast approaching “mud season,” that tenuous period created by melting snow and releasing deep frost before the drying sun firms up the ground. Winter does not leave quietly. Just as summer’s trees held their leaves as long as they could until it became “stick season” and the empty branches silently awaited the first snow, so now the earth stirs and waits, emerging to where it once was.

“Beware the Ides of March” had dramatic meaning in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” but the warning might be worth revisiting each year at this time. No, we’re not about to be stabbed by Brutus and his band of ruffians. However, we’ve still got a few unsettled weeks ahead of us until spring really does take hold and those seed packets are delivered. The lawn mower can remain quietly shrouded in the back of the garage for several more weeks until we call on it to magically spring to life and take us on choreographed walks across the lawn.

Robert Frost, surely New England’s poet, measured this time and cautioned overzealous belief that a few sunny days mean the end of winter in “Two Tramps at Mud Time:”

But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
But, be of good cheer. Your patience will be rewarded soon enough when “April showers bring May flowers.” •