It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations, 1861
March is, in my opinion, the strangest month of the year. It’s the transition period between winter and spring, thus making it the most manic-depressive month by far. This changeover seems to be much wilder and more dramatic than the transition from summer to autumn. The weather is all over the place. Hot one day, snow and below freezing temps the next. And wind. Lots and lots of wind!
I’m not entirely sure why March weather is usually crazier than September. I suspect it’s because it takes a while for the atmosphere to cool down going from summer to autumn. By contrast, the warmup in spring is usually rather rapid, leading to more unsettled weather. But that is just a guess on my part.
And that unsettled weather is why March is such a tease. The sun is higher in the sky, the light is brighter, and the daylength has gotten noticeably longer. So, it you peek out a window, it certainly looks like spring. But oh, can looks be deceiving! For though it may look like spring, it often times doesn’t feel like spring!
Fool’s Spring
The March sun might warm your bones and lighten your spirits. Step into the shade, however, and winter reminds you it is not done with you yet! Or take of your jacket to enjoy the warmth, only to have a March zephyr drop the wind chill by 15 degrees. ARRGH!
March is such a trickster. One day you’re outside on a springlike day, perhaps working in the garden, or going for an afternoon stroll. Signs of life are beginning to appear all around, and the winter lethargy that has gripped us since November begins to fade. Ah, Spring! Welcome back old friend!
Then March laughs and taunts us, by dumping heavy, wet snow the very next day. Take that suckers! Exaggeration? Nope. Check out these photos from March of 2020. I literally unpacked the patio furniture on the 18th and was shoveling a foot of snow two days later.
Spring will never get here!
I think I’ve told this story before on this blog. Heaven knows my wife and daughters have heard it often enough. But it goes to my love/hate relationship with March.
When I was a wee lad, perhaps 7 or 8 years of age, my parents informed me that it was the first day of spring. Yippee! I was so excited. All day I kept going outside, looking and waiting for the arrival of spring. I really thought that in one day the trees would leaf out, the flowers would bloom, and the warm weather would return. Instead, while it was sunny out, it was blustry cold day.
And the only sign of green, growing things was some clover in the grass.
Needless to say, I was very disappointed.
And to this day, that is how I feel about March.
Patience grasshopper
The one thing the intervening years have taught me, is to be patient. While I still anxiously await the arrival of “real” spring, I know now that nature moves to her own rhythm. That it is the soil that must warm up before the trees can leaf out and for the flowers to bloom. And the birds and the bees must time their arrival for when the conditions they need have been met.
Still, it is hard to wait.
But I know that in just a few short weeks, spring will finally arrive in all its glory. And March will go from looking like this…
To looking like this by the end of April.
And life will be grand. Well, at least until August arrives, when the days will be hot and miserable. Then I will bitch about the heat, and I will be pining for the cooler days of autumn.
It’s the curse of the Irish: we’re not happy unless we’re miserable.
