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Spring fever, and just a little make-believe

(page 1 of 2)

    The little kids at school are growing increasingly restless, noticeably wiggy and impatient; the teacher and the ed-tech are perhaps even more so. Nobody wants to go back inside after recess. Kindergarteners flop belly-down across the swings and hang, almost dosing, limp and comfortable like a big fat cat over somebody's forearm. Adult staff and passers-by park at the picnic table and grow roots, imagining the comfort of staying put, breathing in an outdoor warmth not felt in many, many months. Spring fever hits hard in a place where classic “spring days” can be counted on your fingers. It is nearly apple blossom time, which means some of the finest days of the year on Matinicus Island. We are resolved to allow ourselves this privilege.

    Memorial Day may or may not be the start of summer, but around here, we're happy if it proves to be the start of spring. Sure, there have been pleasant and mild days on and off for the past couple of months, but between them come weeks of bluster and chill. Throughout most of the official spring season the wind still has a sharp edge, we still run a wood fire in the kitchen stove in the morning. We're still getting 45-degree nights. Some years, the mud, the rain, the general squishiness in the spring pervades every aspect of island life. This year has been dryer than normal, which is a mixed blessing. In any event, real spring, with warm breezes, with more than the occasional flower, with no threat of the returning cold, tends to hold off until the bitter end.

    All three of my little oak saplings survived another winter. This defies the conventional botanical wisdom and we are certainly gratified. A young boy at the Common Ground Fair three or four years ago was selling small trees in the Youth Enterprise Zone tent; at the end of the day, he had a few acorns in peat cups, a young nurseryman’s left-overs, going for a quarter apiece. I handed over the few coins in my pocket. “Wait until spring,” he told me, “keep them moist, and they will grow.” “They won't grow,” assured just about everybody else, “they're just ol' acorns some kid had, and anyway if they do, they won't survive out here. Oaks don't like it out here.” Too much salt in the air? Wrong kind of soil? Somebody must know, I do not, but so far, despite such wisdom, so good.

    Most of the flowering trees on the mainland are a good deal ahead of us; we will, again, not have any lilacs for Memorial Day. The tulips take a sound thrashing in the wind. Baby maples sprout all over the place in the vicinity of the cemetery, including in my garden among the barely-visible sprouts of recently-planted peas and onions. No point in planting in April, not in these conditions. Over 400 garlic plants don't mind this a bit. I had no Baltimore orioles this year interested in my gift of oranges, but other people have spotted them. I think they made their annual stop here a quick one this time. There have been plenty of eagle sightings, though, and cardinals, which spend the winter. My neighbor Ann tells the story of a male cardinal battling ferociously with a red truck. She eventually threw a tarp over it so he wouldn't bash his brains out.

    A beautiful Memorial Day weekend kept the boys at Penobscot Island Air busy. I haven't met the latest new pilot yet, but word is he's a retired, and thus lawfully bearded, commercial airline pilot. A neighbor told me that his comment on the new job was something like “Much better, much more relaxed...you don't have to shave.”

    The new Internet tower is up; it feels like we're living under the Eiffel Tower now. We've been joking about how it sort of goes with the décor. Nouveau-industrial.