Signs and Portents

Sometimes they're not all bad. Early this morning I awoke, made a cup of coffee, and stepped outside on my front porch. I heard a sound which it seems I'd not heard in a very long time... the honking of huge numbers of geese overhead.

Looking up, even though the sun wasn't yet fully up, I could see the gray outline of three huge flights of geese splayed out in large "V" formations, heading North. It's been pretty much of a bear of a winter in the Northeast this year. It started off just about as mild as you could imagine, with almost no accumulation of snow before New Years. But when old man winter got around to noticing the calendar and doing his business, we got hammered pretty hard. Our county set an all time record for snowfall in the month of January.

There's an old wives tale which says that if March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb. On March second we had a blizzard that shut down most of the state. Almost all of that snow has melted now, and I'm wondering if these geese aren't a portent of an early spring to come. Keep your fingers crossed. My fishing pole is calling to me from the corner of the shed.