Another Sign of Spring for the Winter Weary

This may seem a more vague sign, one that is witnessed here on the Cape, here on the bog, but we who are grabbing at straws for a look to warmer days to come, will embrace it. The sanding of the cranberry bogs.


This past weekend when I walked the bog, the tracks I saw, were not of animals, but of bucket loaders, of sand spreaders, for the owner of the bog was doing something he does at the end of each winter. Spreading a thick layer of sand over the entire bog. They can do this in mid-winter, but my grower seems to favor late winter. It seems he picks a time when he knows the ice on the bog is strong enough to hold the little mini-sanding trucks that zip about spreading it, but close enough to a melt that the sand will then cover the vines as the ice disappears.
This sand helps the plants in several ways, giving them new soil to spread the vines, choking out weed seeds to some extent and even burying some of the eggs laid by insects in the fall.

They were scooping sand from an adjacent pile that exists just for this purpose and it brings to mind the many grown-over, steep mini-canyons that I see as I walk about areas where there are abandoned bogs. Maples and High bush blueberry are quick to grow where the vines were, so at a glance they look like forests, but they are edged in straight water courses, and always, somewhere nearby is that, now overgrown, but steep-edged canyon. The place where that grower dug out his sand, perhaps as far back as 100 years ago. Cool. To see the present use and the past use of land is easy to do in several areas of the Cape.

Today, a warm wind is blowing, well if you consider a 40-degree wind a warm one, and two crow families have come together to sport and dive in the tossing wind. They seem as happy as I to feel the change.
However, this is New England, it could snow tomorrow. But the light is growing longer each day, the chickadees are “fee beeing” and I have heard the drumming of woodpeckers- now the sanding of the bog. The scene for spring is being set little by little. And may we mark each advance with thankfulness. Thankfulness for seasons to begin with. There is a move to Texas in my future, where I will be lucky to eek out two seasons. So, may I embrace the cold and wind and wild changes while I have them! Enjoy everyone!