03/29/2024
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By Jefferson Weaver

We were digging postholes, using the time honored method of slamming the digger into the ground, turning and lifting, when we saw them.

“Look at those fishing worms!” my buddy exclaimed.

There they wriggled, disturbed in their slumber in the sopping wet rich earth, thicker than the lead on a carpenter’s pencil and longer than a little boy’s finger, the perfect size for threading onto a hook and tempting a semi-somnambulant bass, bream or crappie. Spearing several the same way and tossing the ball of worms gently along a weed bed might tease a jack pickerel into a slashing, slicing attack, whilst adding a bit more weight would send the same tasty meal to the realm of the catfish slowly awakening from a winter’s nap.

March is known by some Native American tribes as the Month of Fish, or the Moon of the Spawning Fish; while there is plenty of biological evidence for the name, I sometimes can’t help but wonder if those who first walked this ground before were just tired of gathering firewood for skinny venison, and were ready for a seafood dinner – or like me, they were just ready to go fishing after along, hard winter. The shad will soon be in the rivers, the bass are bedding and striking anything that moves, and the regal catfish have decided that it’s about time to get a little more serious about surveying their underwater kingdoms.

I wanted to be fishing, but chores delayed by my aches and pains and the availability of a buddy and his boys meant we had work to do instead. Nor were we alone.

My guineas were hunting bugs, working through the pine straw with the fervency of a pollster on Election Day eve, and the chickens were happily scratching through a pile of equine political commentary, searching for their own worms and grubs.

Three sets of deer tracks across the pasture showed where the resident does were hunting the forgotten acorns of last year, or raiding the horses’ sweet feed.

Walter the Wonder Dog cast a wise eye across the entire scene, then rolled happily on a precious piece of dry ground, turning his old bones toward the warmth of the sun. Old Red trotted past, dried mud coating his mahogany fur in evidence of his own happy roll in the sun, belying his ancient bones.

I envied them both.

I realized that it was no longer the hated month of February, but it was March, the Month of Promise, and not just on the calendar, either.

March is one of my favorite months, and not just because it nails shut the coffin of February. March is when the first jonquils and daffodils are strong and victorious over winter. They are the scouts for the massed armies of white and yellow-gold lurking in the bulbs below ground, and suddenly there will be ranks upon ranks of my favorite flowers on every ditch bank, field border and old homestead for miles around. They will soon be joined by the iris (of which I have very few, but several have been steadily spreading their broad stalks for a week now) and the flowers I can’t identify. Then the rest of the dogwoods and pears will bloom, along with the old azaleas that always seem to be dead, until their pink and purple blossoms erupt in a celebration that would put any Mardi Gras to shame.

I saw the first of our spring rabbits the other night, dancing in the lane although the Moon of Full Sap was still several days away. The rabbits that survived the flooding rains and foxes and coyotes and bobcats and my old friend the horned owl will soon be wriggling holes into the pine straw, lining those burrows with their own fur, and creating the first young of spring.

March is the beginning of baseball, a sport that I actually care about, at least from the minor leagues on down to Dixie Youth, where dreams still matter and the clean, orderly science of the game is honed in laboratories of re clay and green grass on evenings and after school.

March means it’s time for me to check my sassafras crop – the sweet sassafras, the seeping maples and the weeping pines are why March’s brightest moon was called the Moon of Full Sap. Cold cattails can be yanked from the mud, swished off and crunched raw without as much fear of things that go bump in your stomach.

As a little kid, March meant there was some daylight when my father got home from work. We played catch in the big empty lot behind our home, getting me ready for baseball tryouts. We flew a cheap store-bought kite and tried to fly one we made from wood and newsprint. He made a bow and arrow, and taught me to shoot it. We did little nothing-things I can’t really recall, but so wish that I could.

March means it’s not long til Easter, when Christ defeated death and sin forever.

Yes, March has its bad days: tornadoes, nor’easters, wildfires, ice and snow storms.

My Welsh ancestors called it Cynfarch (Cynmarch), the month of going to war (or gathering the herds, depending on the context). March has seen the beginning and end of so many wars, since the Month of Mud was the first time of the year general could marshal their forces and hit the trail.

More than wars and worries, though, March is a Month of Fat Worms, dancing rabbits, furry happy horses munching the first green grass, old dogs sleeping in the sun, baseball, and first flowers.

March is the month of promise.

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