A Welcome Breath of Spring

Winter hats, for when winter returns

If it's 64 degrees at 7 a.m. today, what will it be later on?

My indoor-outdoor thermometer just tells the facts, but I suspect people are shaking their heads in disbelief that the weather has turned so warm on the second day of winter.

I hope it hits 70 today, just for the novelty. Yesterday I was able to sit outside in the sun and make some cell phone calls after doing garden chores. I had to get some oxalis corms out of a window box for planting indoors and I marked all the praying mantis egg cases in the forsythia bush with bits of yarn, the better to spot them in the spring.

It was only a few days ago that I was housebound due to sheets of ice all over. My family is so small that I did not have to be out shopping for presents, so I had plenty of time to finish off another batch of hats to give to the church for distribution.

When we lived up in Passaic Township many years ago, even before the name was was changed to Long Hill Township, I remember a warm spell in winter that woke up the spring peepers in the Great Swamp. It was quite incongruous to hear their their song and realize it was not jingle bells, but a chorus of tiny frogs roused too early by the unusual weather.

Soon enough the temperature will drop again. Walking around will become an adventure (or horror) for us older pedestrians. Indoor chores such as tending house plants and windowsill pots for spring crops will prevail. Online shopping will obviate struggling with weather and traffic at the malls.

I just hope we get to spring without anything like the 17 snowstorms a new mayor encountered 20 years ago. Meanwhile, I'll be out in the yard again today or off on a frost-free jaunt somewhere, enjoying the brief respite from winter.

--Bernice