Signs of spring.... elsewhere than here

My daily blog rounds are become depressing.

I generally check in on the news from four other small farms every day. There's no specific reason for the particular picks, except that one is on an island that I used to visit regularly. I could have picked any of hundreds of interesting farm blogs. But somehow I settled on these four, about the same time I started this blog, during the winter of 2007-2008, and I've kept up with them ever since, on a daily basis. I know that I'm a creature of habit, and that this is boring, to check the same four sites (in the same order too!) every morning. But I do.

Actually, if you think about, having very settled habits is a good trait in a farmer. Livestock need to be fed and watered and checked every day without fail. You can't wake up and say, "I don't think I'll feed the sheep today. I think I'll do something different instead."

But back to these four little plots, all around the northern hemisphere.

Unfortunately, all four get an earlier spring than we do. This despite the fact that all but one are further north.

Life at the End of the Road can see green grass beginning to show on his highland hillsides. And, judging from the pictures, the snow is all gone.

Musings from a Stonehead may or may not still have snow, he doesn't say. He's the only one that hasn't reported some obvious sign of spring yet. But I used to live in Findhorn village, about forty miles to the northeast, where February was pleasant enough, compared to Maine. At the very least, you could take a walk outside without encountering any white stuff.

It's definitely spring in Oregon where Throwback at Trapper Creek lives. They have stuff growing again, nettles and rhubarb. Durn.

Finally, Colour it Green Diary in Devon has been sowing seed. Bugger.

And the Guardian is reporting snowdrops, and showing pictures of the same. Double bugger.

I find all this miserably depressing. Call it jealousy, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, or just call it a normal Maine winter.

What an Eeyore. I'd better snap out.

This mood persists despite the fact that our weather has improved here. Instead of dropping down to 0 F or -10 F every night, it's only dropping down to 10 or 20 F. While the daytime has been up in the high twenties or low thirties. This is enough to make the frozen mud on our driveway a little damp in the afternoons, enough to very slowly melt the snow, enough, even, when combined with my household insulation and airflow work (below) to reduce the woodpile consumption to a third of what it was two weeks ago. I now expect our woodpile to last the winter, which is very good.

But it's still bl***dy winter and will be so for another four weeks. At the very least. We could even, as the weather forecaster said last night, adding to my mood only somewhat gratuitously, "...get a three foot snowstorm in April"

AAAAAARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH! Stupid bl***dy weatherman!

Why'd he have to say that?

Something has got to give around here.

I think this is why our ancient British isles ancestors drank a lot of beer and sang songs and played loud music on things like bagpipes and so on, in the winters.

That would help. A good old RAF Mountain Rescue sing-song.

I've played the wild rover for many a year...

etc, &c

Or even louder, with actions. Fiddles. Bodhrans. Squeezeboxes. Strip the willow or an eightsome reel. That would be fun.

A pity that by the time the English actually came to New England they'd become Puritan and renounced such frivolity. Idiots. And however did they put up with themselves?

What I really need is a good walk in the fresh air, followed by a good dinner, and then a good raucous night in the pub.

We can probably manage everything but the raucous bit. Americans don't sing old folk songs in pubs or have village hall ceilidhs.

Maybe the wifie will oblige me, too. She was talking about going out. And it is Valentines weekend. A quiet dinner and drink with the wifie in a dockside brew pub in Belfast, Maine is not quite playing the Wild Rover the way I used to, but it sure sounds nicer than sitting here in my den reading about spring...

...every ruddy where else but here.