"Spring starts officially on Monday," he said, "St Brigid's Day. And, like many of us I, too, have been in a state of half-hibernation, like the grey squirrels who for some time ceased to be daily visitors to the birdfeeders. Not that they ever hibernate, according to Fairley, but like the rest of us become discouraged weatherwise. And there are small signs at last that the badgers are stirring occasionally from the immediate area of their sett. The other day there were a couple of distinctive holes in the lawn where they dig for worms and whatnot. The thrush pours out song from the top of the cypress tree each morning. Is he or she still looking for a mate? The robin is super-active, looking, very likely, for a safe nesting place." (Didn't some source quoted here recently claim that the robin builds two nests, one for each brood he or they expect to raise.)
But it has been a long haul, this rotten weather. A few weeks ago a man found one, repeat one, snowdrop on his lawn and marked the occasion by sticking a huge twig into the grass beside it. But it wasn't long before he had a second and a third, not many more. A bad year. Salmon fry will be coming out of their ova or eggs. Tiny things, but reminders of the eternal cycles. Just when do lambs appear? "I remember," he said, "when opening day on the Boyne system for trout-fishing used to be February 15th. We were always first-day anglers and the favourite starting-place became known as the Lambs' Field because of the many newly-born. Or was it a bit later. Anyway, it's still the Lambs' Field, though nothing but cattle, or sometimes horses are now seen there."
On another, rather childish, note, a friend claims to have the two first oaks of 1999 already flourishing. It's the old trick or putting acorns, point down, perched on the top of a Ballygowan bottle (the ordinary small one such as you order in a pub) filled with water. A good acorn will sit there without falling in. If it's a bit small, prop it there with a match or twig. It starts in the kitchen window. Soon long roots come down, then grow side-roots. The shell splits, and out of the heart of the acorn comes a tiny green shoot that's to be eventually the trunk of a fine tree. A few weeks ago the first treelet, six inches high, with fine green leaves was transferred to a pot of compost and put into the cold greenhouse. Soon it may be put out into the open.
Everywhere something is moving. As Robert Louis Stevenson put it: "The world is so full of such wonderful things,/I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."