Spring Weather Enjoyed

 We've had another warm day today. It wasn't sunny like yesterday, but it was still quite warm, in the 40s, and even now, at 5:30 p.m., my thermometer is reading 34F. We have had a mix of rain and very wet snow off and on. I had to go into St. Johnsbury late this morning, and there was a mist in the air as I was leaving. St. J. had nothing going on, but when I was on my way home, I noticed that misty precipitation again as I approached Danville, and by the time I reached home - actually, just as I drove into my garage and closed the overhead door, there were big, fluffy, very moist snowflakes falling. We gained perhaps an inch, but it was so wet it packed down quickly and melted on some surfaces. We are headed for near-zero temperatures by this weekend or the first of next week. That's the nature of our weather pattern this winter. It's been a roller-coaster of warm and deep, deep cold since December.

I learned yesterday that Pam Heffernan's brother, David Calderwood, passed away recently. Some of you will remember David - he and Pam grew up here at Joe's Pond, coming every summer to the family cottage on North Shore Road, near the Joe's Pond Association boat access. Pam renovated the cottage a few years back and it is now here year-around home. I knew both Pam and David when they were youngsters in St. Johnsbury, the children of Wesley and Winona Calderwood. If you'd like to reach out to Pam, her mailing address is: Pam Heffernan, P. O. Box 152, West Danville, VT 05873.

If you haven't looked at the Joe's Pond Association website (joespondvermont.com) lately, I suggest you do so. It is looking very nice, and has a lot of valuable information on it. We sometimes forget to go there, but Joanne Stewart asked me to check on some changes she was making to pages that had articles I'd written, and I was impressed and pleased with the way things are looking. So many websites are created, opened and then nobody bothers to maintain them, and that is just sad. All too often the information found there is not up to date. Kudos to Joanne and Jamie Stewart (and others) who are bothering to keep JPA's updated.

Did I mention that the water level in the pond I had dug last summer has dropped substantially? We left the line running from a spring above the pond, but with all the cold weather, I'm sure that froze weeks ago, and apparently, with no water running in, plus evaporation, seepage and condensing to form ice, the depth has decreased. It's sort of like Joe's Pond used to be back in the day when Otis Brickett took out a board or two at the dam and let the pond level drop in order to compensate for anticipated spring rain. That can no longer happen - the water level in the pond is mandated by the state to remain at a certain level. I don't expect I'll have any overflow, come spring. There will be plenty of room for rain water, melting snow, and runoff from the hillside above the pond. I know there were several frogs in the pond last fall, so I'm thinking I should be able to enjoy their singing as soon as the ice is gone this spring. Just one of the perks of having a pond close by - with shoreline weeds and cattails! It will be great fun to watch the pond evolve in the spring. Everything was new and "raw" last fall, but there will be a new crop of grass and no doubt a variety of water/marsh plants along the shoreline, which is what I was hoping for.  In the meantime, there's plenty of snow to deal with and spring won't be here anytime soon. We still have March ahead of us.

Stay well and be happy.