Transitions

I missed the first kiss of spring this year, that touch of warmth on your cheek the sun puts there for the first time since the previous summer. I missed it probably because it is usually felt through a car window while you are driving and my commuting ended Feb. 22, just about the time it usually happens. I knew I missed it because the other day when I was walking up the driveway I felt the sun actually burning the back of my neck. But, I think I found a better name for that phenomenon anyway. I had come across a long-forgotten song while looking for "Phaedra" the other day and it has this line in it: "like an angel's kiss in spring." Change that to an angel's kiss OF spring and there it is. OK, here's a mini quiz. Care to guess the song?

Today was definitely a spring day in Alaska. Ice all over the place, snow deep in the shade but sun blazing, temperature above 50 and everything thawing. Living as I do, I can now sleep in as late as I like and still get up and be moving in the natural morning. I say natural morning because Alaska messed up its time zones several years ago so the whole state would be functioning in the same time frame. There used to be four and Anchorage was two time zones removed from Seattle. Since the change it's now only an hour. That puts us one hour off true local noon. Add daylight saving time and it becomes two hours. So this time of year local noon, the time of day when the sun appears highest in the sky, actually occurs at 2 p.m. A mariner using Alaska daylight time would be hundreds of miles off course, given that every minute of latitude equals a nautical mile, even though time is used to delineate longitude.

So I went out at noon (MY noon) and spent several hours putzing in the yard. First I picked up debris left by the melting snow. Then I looked at the garden which is free of snow except at the extreme shaded end. I started raking out the dead leaves still there and even the leaf rake broke through the soil. Next came the hard rake and pretty soon I had the cultivator. By the time I was finished, I had half the garden broken and raked including all those road apples the horses so generously left last winter.

The surprises were, first I found small green things growing. The are probably weeds but they might be those Johnny flowers that showed up late last summer so I will let them grow for a while. But even better I found new growth on both lilac bushes, much more on the one that's getting all the sun, the one that showed no interest in growing last year. The small picture up there is one of those buds.

And I made a plan. I had good luck with tomatoes last year. I thought I might try one of those hanging upside down tomato growers. I have a good window to hang it in until it's warm enough outside and then can hang it on the outside of the very same window. We shall see how well that goes.

Winter still clings a little. I picked up all the bird feeders but one, to clean them and put them away until next winter. For one they tend to attract bears and for another it is good for the birds to have to forage when there is food for them so they don't get all dependent on the feeders. The one I left for a day or so had a number of customers. While I was working in the garden I could actually hear the flutter of their wings as they came to it. With the sun shining from the right direction I made some pictures and was able to get to within arm's length of the feeder while they were flying to it.

So, all in all a transition day heavy on the sunny side and the garden is almost half way toward being ready for planting. And Green Day is still probably at least three weeks away

The song? "Summer wine" Lee Greenwood and Nancy Sinatra