Vermont In a Warm April.

4-9-21 VERMONT: We came up this morning, getting here in the early afternoon to full sun and 75°. As I have said many times, it’s like traveling backwards in time, having just left NJ with flowers and green grass. While it’s a beautiful day, there are still small patches of snow. The snow has lasted until late April other years. The  road is fine, but recently had been closed for deep mud.

The game cam showed ice on the pond as recently as two days ago and still iced over about a week ago. The ponds are ice free now. One turtle was sunning itself this afternoon, and I saw a crawfish, a newt and am hearing the first notes of the frog opera. The waterfall is a trickle. The huge wet areas below the new dam are much dryer this spring.

I had time to do a bunch of stuff—I put away the snow shovels, took down the reflectors for the driveway plowers, put up the pasture gate, put away the big tarp covering the rockers and deck table on the terrace, started clearing the winter debris, repaired a wall, walked around the pasture with Judy and the dogs, put out a couple benches. We talked to Steve and Diana, the neighbors, who were taking down the sap buckets and taps. They said it was a bad syrup season. 

The grass is brown, the trees are just beginning to open buds. Robins are here working on the grass. If you look down in the beds, you can see tiny shoots of the perennials just starting to grow.

New blooms: snowdrops are everywhere, hellebore.   

A fox crossing the frozen pond a few weeks ago, there is extensive snow cover.

Four days ago, there are snow piles around the house and ice on the pond.

Two days ago, there is still ice on the pond and snow piles around the house as Diana walks across the dam.

Today, Bally sees his reflection in the pond. All the ice is gone and only a little snow left.

A little patch of icy snow still to melt.

It must be spring.

First day out of the mud at the bottom of the pond?

Snowdrops.