DUMMERSTON — It's spring, and the daffodils are confused.
So are the ants.
And the goldfinches.
And so am I.
Even given the famed changeability of Vermont weather, you have to admit we had a weird winter. The biggest snowstorm hit the day before Halloween, and the next snow of any significance came on Leap Day. Notice the four-month differential?
In between, this was perhaps the sunniest and least precipitation-filled winter that anyone can remember. What happens when you've gone through a season where there was no excuse for Seasonal Affective Disorder because there were far more sunny days than gray ones?
In the warm and sunny spots of Brattleboro - like the wall by Key Bank on Main Street - there have been daffodil shoots since mid-February.
People have been tapping maple trees and boiling for weeks.
Birds have been shunning feeders because there is plenty of open ground to feed upon.
The goldfinches started to molt from olive green to yellow a few weeks ago, then stopped, then started again.
At my house, the late-spring ants hatched in February and started searching for honey and grease. Despite all the boric-acid-laden ant killer we've laid out for them - and they circle it like planes at an airport hub and greedily suck it up - we haven't been able to get rid of them. It's like living in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
We've had so many dry days on dirt roads that the police have been stopping cars because they can't read the license plates through the dirt.
Even our road is confused. It's been hard, then mud, then ice, then slush, then mud, and then even deeper mud. Its poor head is spinning more than the wheels of my car.
What if the bears had woken up?
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Part of why everyone gets so gushy about spring - Daffodils! Ahhhhh! - is that they are our reward for suffering through four months of ice and snow and cold and miserable gray days.
Can you wistfully look out of the window at the snow while reading seed catalogs when there hasn't been any snow for months? When you're using your cross-country skis to prop up your wood pile? When the shovels stuck into snowbanks have been lying on the ground for months?
How do you look forward to spring when you haven't had winter? (And for that matter, thanks to Irene, we didn't have much of a fall, either.)
There have been “open winters” in the past, but is this the start of a new weather paradigm, the “global weirding” that climatologists have been warning us about?
And how does it affect us as we move into spring?
The truth is, the odd winter climate isn't going to affect our spirits.
It's the job of daffodils to capture sunlight and joy. They're all about expectation.
The expectation that soon the trees will start putting out tiny little buds until they all turn chartreuse and the whole world, drunk on the scent of apple blossoms, reels in the delight of them.
Then come the loudly chirping peepers.
Then come the spring rituals: detailing the car, disturbing the spiders with the spring cleaning, and washing the windows to let in new light.
The hummingbirds will be arriving soon. We'll put out their feeders and take down the sunflower seeds because the bears will be waking up soon.
It may have been an unusual winter, but spring will come.
Unless...