The Daily: 8 March 2026

In acknowledgment of the spring sun’s rising earlier and earlier — 6:16am in my town yesterday — those who follow Daylight Savings Time have had an hour removed from their morning today at 2am. This morning’s sunrise is 7:14am, meaning we’ve lost an hour of morning light so that we can have more day in the evening hours. Sunset today is at 6:47pm. Since we don’t shift our work schedules to work later in the day, I’m not sure how this is a savings of daylight. It seems more like a loss of sleep. It’s harder to fall asleep when it’s still light out, so we’re awake later. But we still have to get up at 5am — or whatever unholy time is necessary to accommodate wage work — and now this is once again in the darkness of winter. Which means it’s harder to wake up also. No body particularly likes this odd shifting of clock time. But then most bodies don’t much like clock time generally. I hope I live long enough to see clock time eliminated with the rest of modernity’s management of our lives. But I’d settle for ending Daylight Savings Time.

Still, the clock shift and the waning of the Hunger Moon are both undeniable signs of spring. The temperatures are definitely warm enough for spring, and we’ve had rain for the first time in months. But there was a lot of snow dumped on us this year. So there’s still no sign of soil, though the rims of the garden beds and planters are exposed again and I managed to sledge hammer the three inches of ice off my walkway with nothing replacing it… finally… so it’s sort of spring. Or maybe spring-leaning?

But it is not bunnies-and-flowers spring. It is not our ideas of spring. And it never is around the equinox. This time of year, my part of the world is never notably pink and fuzzy. It is not a time of lambs gamboling in green meadows dotted with wildflowers and butterflies. There are no nodding daffodils and leaves dancing in the gentle spring zephyrs. The view out my window is not particularly vernal. Nevertheless, it is Spring. In fact, by sun and moon, it is squarely the middle of Spring, which is an entirely different time than what is sold to us in wall calendars and gift shops and Etsy.

This time is not cute infants and t-shirt weather. It is mud-caked shoes and hours of mopping. It is bare branches and brown garden beds, usually flocked with ice if not still buried under snow. It is the frozen lid on the composter and the frozen pipe-drain in the garage. Sap may need warm sunshine every day to stir the trees from their solstice somnolence, but sap also needs winter temperatures every night to set up the hydraulics of pumping fluid from root to twig and back again. A good syrup season needs cold nights all through March, not least to endure the heat of the evaporators. No, Spring is not fluffy. It is jagged and cold interleaved with fog and mud deep enough to swallow a forklift. (True story in Vermont… or maybe apocryphal, but told frequently enough to make it truthy…)

Still… the Old Farmer’s Almanac claims that hummingbirds are migrating north now, though they won’t be in New England until May brings nectar-filled blossoms. The crows are active again in the early morning, and I’ve heard something that may be a warbler in the cold hour before sunrise. I can’t image what a warbler, a nearly exclusive insectivore, is eating right now, but I do have meal worms in my feeder. I imagine I might not notice if there are warblers on the feeders because all the small birds are gorging themselves. The chickadees are demanding a restock every couple days, and the finches stare dolefully at the back door when the feeders get low.

The male wren has been investigating my back porch this year. He is small enough to be able to slip under the gaps in my charming, but decidedly crooked, porch doors. But he seems to forget how he got in; and, if startled by a lumbering biped, he’ll flit about in a panic trying to find the exit. I can’t see how this is a happy place for him, but maybe the cold has prompted him to find warmer shelter. However, if he does get over his fear of me enough to build his nest, Mama wren probably won’t care. Once the nest is built, she’ll hunker down and placidly ignore me no matter how close I get. The problem with that is the male will dive bomb anyone who gets too close to his incubating family, and my back porch being about six feet wide means that everything is close…

But no Mama wren yet. I don’t see that any birds are obviously nesting. However, the female cardinals are gone. In fact, I haven’t seen the males too much either, though I do hear them. So I think they may be nesting. I hope they weathered the recent plunge below zero…

I’ve seen very little evidence of mammals. No groundhog. No chipmunks. No raccoon tracks around the composters. I know the skunks are preparing to be in the family way because they are stinking up the garage, but I haven’t seen them out and about. There are very few tracks of any kind in the snow. I haven’t even seen much of my squirrel population.

So that is the extent of spring here now. No bunnies. No warm breezes. Absent female cardinals notwithstanding, not much evidence of eggs. No green, though the buds are finally swelling on the maples and apple trees. The snow is melting though, which means mud…

Spring is laundry season in Vermont. There is an urge to dig out the lighter clothing — to be ready in case the temperature climbs above freezing — and there is a need to air out the household fabrics that have been moldering all through the winter confinement. But mostly it’s down to all this mud.

I don’t wash clothing unless it is dirty. This saves money on my water and electric bills. But it’s also better for the fabric — and the planet. Frequent washing breaks down the fibers. It wears out your clothing quickly, in the process sending petrochemicals that make up the dyes and synthetic threads down the drain and ultimately into plant and animal tissues. Not a goal. So I don’t wash until I can see or smell the need. This usually means I can put things back in the closet in the evening — but not in spring. However much care is taken, you will acquire a spattering of mud on your hemline as soon as you set foot outside. Brushing against the car or the garden gate will smear your clothes with grey grit. Walking to the store is misery. Thinly frozen pothole landmines filled with slush and road run-off, cars splashing icy grime, gunk dripping from buildings — it’s impossible to make a trip without generating a whole load of laundry.

In normal months, I wash maybe a load a week. In spring, it’s double that or more. This is hard on the water budget, but it’s murder on the electricity bill. It’s very hard to dry things outdoors in this damp climate, and it’s almost as difficult to hang things dry in the basement. So I use my dryer more than I’d like. (This is what really breaks down fabric fibers… hence dryer lint…) The extra laundry is underscoring my need for a wood stove. I need a point source for heat, and I need a dry basement. Then these racks and lines I have strung up down there will allow my clothes to dry before they mildew. Or dry at all in some cases. I have to bring sweaters upstairs to the kitchen — which is awkward in that very small space — because bulky fabrics do not dry in the basement.

A sweater has to be obviously soiled before I take on that project…

For all that there is still snow and the garden is mostly frozen, it is time to start planting seeds. The week after next is the equinox; it’s the middle of spring, the half-way point between the solstices. The days are rapidly lengthening and the soil is coming alive under the warm caress of the sun, though we may not be able to see it. For plants like tomatoes and peppers, it is time to sow seeds in paper pots indoors so that these long season plants have time to fruit before frost reclaims the garden in the autumn.

This year, I planted the peppers at the new Hunger Moon, and there are already sprouts in most of the pots. I was going to buy basil and tomatoes and eggplants locally, but I chickened out. The cost of potted plants, even local plants, just keeps going up, and I don’t think I can afford plants. Add in the plastic that rarely gets recycled, and I decided to buy seed and start the plants in the guest room bathtub (that never gets used as a bathtub).

But the seed hasn’t shown up yet, so that will happen next weekend, I guess. Or maybe I’ll be a crazy moon gardener and wait until the new moon on St Joseph’s Day, 19 March. It is also traditional in New England to plant peas — and other cold-hardy veggies — on St Paddy’s Day. So I’ll do that if the weather is at all cooperative, though I might push that off until the following weekend. While there is sunlight into the evenings (and my shift ends earlier with this new job), there isn’t quite enough time to get all the peas in the ground after work.

Of course, none of that is ordained. Garden plans never are, and the more ambitious the more likely they won’t happen. I am not upset by this. In fact, I enjoy the planning part. So the prospect of failure just means I get to make more plans. It’s a good idea to have multiple pathways to food and be ready to use any of them when things go sideways. As they will.

But for today, the plan is working… We’ll see what the spring brings…

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©Elizabeth Anker 2026