A couple of things we need to remember:  We set our clocks ahead one hour on Saturday night, March 9th, and the following Saturday, March 16, is Cabot's Maple Fest.  Mark your calendars!  Click on the poster to learn more about the Maple Fest.

I received Burr Morse's newsletter today and was amazed that they have already made some maple syrup over there in Montpelier at the Morse Maple Farm.  Probably not very much, and I don't imagine they've made much since, but it's a start.  Their weather is always a bit different than we are here - their growing season is always at least a couple of weeks ahead of us and lasts longer, too.  So it's logical maple season would be earlier, too. Things are beginning to look and smell a lot more like spring around here, though.  I noticed today how the wind was blowing - typical March wind - the kind that I looked forward to when I was a kid.  My mother, who had even more freckles than I, used to try to keep me out of the wind so my freckles wouldn't "come out."  There was no  way she was going to be able to keep me inside on nice windy spring days, and no way I cared whether my freckles stood out or not.  They always bothered her far more than they bothered me.  I don't know if it was the wind or the sun or a combination of both, but I always managed to have a good crop across my nose and later, covering most of my face.  Of course now those freckles blend with "age spots," but they don't bother me much, either, although I do have a dermatologist take a look at my skin every couple of years, having had some really severe sunburns as a kid.

Today we actually saw the sun for a few minutes, and that was a rare treat.  I don't know what the high temperature was, probably in the mid 30's, but there was lots of wind.  I've been looking out at the landscape around our house, noticing how it has changed since we had the big trees cut.  There are still lots of young maples and evergreens, so it doesn't look scalped; but it's taking time to get used to seeing the contours of the property.  From my office window, I keep watching the steep hillside in back of our house, expecting to see a deer or a turkey meandering by.  So far I haven't spotted anything bigger'n a squirrel out there.  I think the logging operation is finished, although we haven't had word from Johnny Doyon, our logger.  There is still a fair amount of product at the landing, waiting to be picked up, but he seems to have taken away all the logs that were down and the brush from them, and it's looking pretty good.  Of course, there's snow covering everything, so it will be hard to tell until later in the spring, but I'm hoping we'll have some quick recovery of ferns and undergrowth to cover the inevitable scars from the logging.

We celebrated Diane Rossi's birthday last night with dinner here.  Don and Diane Sherwood had just arrived for their winter Joe's Pond vacation, and we were happy they could join us.  Now we're all excited that the flag and clock for the Ice Out Contest is going to be set up on Saturday.  At least, that's the plan as of now.  Larry Rossi and a helper will be out there on the ice getting things lined up.  We aren't certain, but we think the web cams should have the clock and the flag on them by Saturday night.  We'll keep you posted.