We've had a spring day.  It hasn't been exceptionally warm, but it was certainly an improvement over Tuesday's and Wednesday's snow and wind.  Fred and I went to Cabot on Tuesday - he picked up Ice-Out tickets in Cabot and Walden while I met with our historical society president, Bonnie Dannenberg and a group of students at Cabot School.  Our meeting was great fun.  Both Bonnie and I enjoyed brainstorming with the kids.  We will be providing some background information for them to use in a special program they will be doing in mid-May.

As we came home, the wind was whipping on Cabot Plain by the cemetery.  There were a few small drifts formed across the road, and some spots on the knolls were showing bare ground where the snow had been blown away.  We had been in St. Johnsbury in the morning, picking up tickets there, and as usual, there was hardly any snow.  It was still a bit raw, though.  This was the road by our house when we started off on Tuesday morning.  Looks more like February, doesn't it?  Below is how it looked in the afternoon by the cemetery.

Yesterday was spent sorting and counting tickets.  It's a huge job, and Diane and Bill Rossi were doing the same with tickets they picked up in the Barre area.  When we are finished sorting and counting, the tickets go to our data specialist, Henretta Splain, who logs them on a spreadsheet.  There will be in the vicinity of 11,500 +/-  and it will be a few days before she has them all logged in.  Then we will sit back and wait for the ice to melt, letting the pallet sink or drift to stop the clock.  

We are quite a bit behind last year when the clock stopped on April 8th; however, I noticed there is a bit of open water showing far up in the channel that leads into the pond at the northwest corner. (See picture.) We have also been seeing robins for the past several days.  They look a bit bewildered, not finding much bare ground, but they seem to hang out on the muddy road and maybe even find a worm or two, if they're lucky.  Also, we've been hearing geese for the past couple of weeks, off and on.  They are looking for open water and a place to spend the summer raising their young.  The weather is supposed to get warmer for the next few days, so we'll begin to see more signs of spring, I'm sure.  Yippee!!