March gives birth to spring, which is not a simple event here. There have to be cycles of sunny fanfares with high-flying clouds, followed by leaden light and falling snows; freezing interludes, followed by window-opening warmth; and sudden surprises of fog and/or rain.
This March, snow and no-snow versions of familiar sights were remarkable, including the view across Blue Hill Bay to Acadia National Park and the view from beside the lily pond on WoodenBoat Campus:
The rain in the woods made the moss vibrant and the subsequent snow covered it with soft icing; sun-splattered country lanes were turned into monochrome etchings by falling snow; lush, rain-dappled bogs became treacherous ice; and, freezing days assured that plenty of firewood was used:
American robins announced the arrival of spring by hopping around fields when the sun shone; resident white-tailed deer rejected the concept in the half-light of dawn snowfalls, and migrating Canada geese didn’t think ice in the ponds was spring-like:
Nonetheless, pussy willow catkins appeared on time , British soldier lichens thrived, and polypore fungi hung in there:
On the waterfront, March is the last month of Maine’s scallop-dragging (dredging) season. To drag for scallops in the winter, our summer lobster boats are equipped with masts, booms, shelling huts, and drags (dredges). At the end of this March, they started to come in to have that equipment removed at the Town Dock:
Although March is rife with variables, it has two constants around here: One is St. Patrick’s Day, when you can hoist a glass of Guinness; the other is the opening of the elver season, when you can net a glass eel. (Fyke funnel nets are used to catch baby American eels. These little creatures are called glass eels because they’re mostly transparent; the nets are placed where the eels try to ascend streams to get to the ponds in which their parents matured.)
Finally, March is when the grocery stores sell spring flowers to Mainers whose gardens have not thawed yet:
(All images above were taken in Down East Maine in March of 2022.)