March Into Summer: An Atypical Spring In Vermont

            March is usually a predictable month.  Here, in the North it is usually still winter; only a faint harbinger of Spring.  Usually it comes in with fields of cold snow, bright blue skies, lengthening days.  As this photo shows, March typically starts with piles of snow above the windows, like massive waves on a white sea.  But this photo is from last winter.  It is not this March.  
           Typically March brings big storms and worries about barn roofs collapsing and never ending winter; typically March leaves with slight warmth and a big snow pack to make April just miserable.  But not this year.

           We had a false summer.  Not a thaw or warm day, a heat wave.  The false summer of 2012 was not okay.  Yes, the warm weather was stunning and yes the blue skies and green grass a welcome relief.  If this were North Carolina.  It is just wrong for it to be eighty degrees once, let alone day on end in March in Vermont.  Wrong but wonderful.

            We all got out.  Yard work done, road running every day, bikes on dry pavement.  On top of it all the skiing was shockingly good.  Our Mountain held the snow well.  Moguls the size of old Volkswagens; the snow peeling away underfoot like ocean waves; corn snow, day after day, warm sun, skiing in t-shirts with no gloves.  Come on.  It was fantastic for a short while there.  In fact for a bad snow season the skiing this year was pretty damn good.  Sure, it went too fast; there were days we had to ski across grass and moss to get through some pitches; but we did it with a smile, if not some schizophrenia.

            Skiing in the morning, gardening in the afternoon.  Any gardener in Vermont will know nothing really goes in the ground until Memorial Day.  Maybe some greens can go in when the ground is warm and dry in late April.  Maybe.  Maybe cold frames.  Maybe if you can dig them out of the deep old snow.

I watched my fallow garden patch this March.  I watched longingly.  I watched the snow sublimate and finally disappear.  Then I watched the dark soil dry out.  I watched and waited.  I waited for winter to come back.  It didn’t.  So I waited for the earth to turn warm, for worms to start their work, for stuff to actually start to grow.  In March.  And then winter still didn’t come back so I churned the soil.  And then I couldn’t wait any more so I weeded out the early growth.  I built a new trellis for the peas.  By the ides of March I bought seeds and compost.

And then, on a dry eighty-degree day, a mid-March eighty-degree day, I gave up and planted rows of collards, peas and greens.  I cut the rows and laid the seed into the warm earth.  No bugs harassing my head while I worked, a warm breeze, sweet sweat.  Sweet sweat working outside in March.  Of course it is a bit of an experiment; it should be too early, I almost hope it is too early.  But the conditions were right – ground frost-free, soil warm and it stayed warm.  We will see, but I could have peas in May.  Peas in May.  How odd that will be.

            One more curve ball just before this odd March left us for good.  President Obama flew in and visited the Green Mountain State.  Talk of the President’s visit swirled around town – who’s going, who’s not; why it took him so long to join us; whether to drive to the airport and stand in the parking garage and watch Air Force One taxi in – not the 747 version, a smaller plane, but the comforting baby blue and white livery of Our President.

            He landed at the airport.  Facebook photos sprung up like crocuses in March.  The motorcade piled out of the massive C-17 cargo planes.  A row of shiny, serious cars.  Black limos and white SUVs, just like the movies.  They rolled from the military aircraft and picked up the President, shot out of the Air Guard side of the airport and cruised to the University.  There was an expensive lunch for the liber-ati.  There was a proletarian event at My Old School for the rest of Vermont. 

The President spoke of hope, of good things to come, of the strength of the union.  Kids swarmed.  The motorcade sped back to the airport and he was off.

            At our Cinema the night of the President’s visit, experiencing the other phenomenon of this odd March, the dystopian Titanic of the Hunger Games, we chatted with one of the dozens of middle school boys dying to see Katniss one more time.  “I saw the President today,” he said, with a big smile.  He had stood only ten feet from the leader of the free world.  He believes they made eye contact.  The smile on this boy was as big as Mansfield.  What an experience to see the leader of the free world.

            George Washington came to Vermont once, I think.  The young man waiting for the Hunger Game’s to start will remember seeing Obama for many, many years to come (more years than he’ll remember Katniss).  More Facebook photos of the President sprouting like grass.  A smiling president with people we all know.  Not a common sight. Not a normal March experience.

            A warm spell in March I could take without comment.  But this year the weather was not a warm spell; it was a season.  A full-on false summer.  Trees budded, lawns grew, gardens thawed, the snow just went.  This false summer was like young love.  I fell in love with the warm days and cool, cloudless nights even though I knew in my head it would not last and was bad for me.  As bad as kryptonite.  I knew when it did end it would hurt, which it did.  And the cruelest month has just begun, April will be miserable; there’s plenty more pain to come.  And you know what?  I’d do it all over again.

            March is usually a predictable month.  Not this year.  This year we got Summer in March.  Early garden.  Charmed visit from the President.  Katniss.  This year we got a full dose of hope and renewal, more than a harbinger of Spring in the air. 

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2012 David Rocchio