February's Beckoning Beginning

The sun is rising on the first day of February, and the last day -- if the forecasters are to be believed -- before the next big blizzard of the season after a melting week of unseasonably warm days and nights. Most of the snow is gone, giving the girls an actual range in which to free range. The sun is daily adding minutes of daylight, albeit at a glacial pace, and the flock has shown its appreciation in the egg count -- 7 yesterday where the recent norm has been 2 or 3.

Indoors, the outdoors has inspired excitement for a few more garden seeds, trees, and fruit and nut bushes now on order, and a couple of new planting tools have been delivered and assembled. These recent hints of spring have been a blessed seduction.

And, of course, a wake-up call. There is preparatory work to be done. There is an online Garden Planner subscription to be renewed, a garden planting layout to be designed. In a few short weeks there will be bags of potting soil to unload, soil blocks to press out, seeds to plant, and the greenhouse to organize and tend. That, and those new tools to caress with anticipatory affections.

That said, it is only February 1 with fully a month yet of winter to navigate -- at the very least, with tomorrow's predicted 6 inches of snow punctuating that reality. And single-digit temps later in the week. There will yet be driveways to plow, front porches to shovel, and in the chicken yard straw to scatter. Tomorrow, as likely as not, with 50 mph winds undoing whatever remediation we get done. We'll not let today's 40-degree high persuade us to closet our coats.

But we will relish the day -- the pups and the chickens -- basking in the sun, sniffing into loamy corners, pecking over and exploring expanses of naked ground. And me, chuckling at the beautiful, ephemeral playfulness of it all.

It is truly the birth of a beautiful day. Welcome to February bright sun.