This year’s first spring omen came to me on top of a donut.
The donut was plump, round and fresh. Its top was covered with maple frosting. “I’ll take that one,” I pointed, and the lady behind the counter picked up the beautiful pastry with a square of waxed paper, put it in bag and handed it over.
The donut tasted as good as it looked, and as I licked the last crumbs from my fingers, memory of my one brief experience with maple sugaring returned as it does every time I taste maple syrup.
Many years ago, when I first moved to Cook County, Dick and I rented a house on Maple Hill. An abundance of maple trees filled the hill below us, and I enthusiastically tapped a dozen or so, gathering four gallons of sap. Each morning, I trudged through the crunchy snow to collect the sweet liquid. Unfortunately, this amount boiled down to only a minuscule 8 ounces.
Quality beat quantity in this instance. That tiny amount of my hand-harvested to syrup was the best I’ve ever tasted (okay, could be biased) but each spring, anything with maple flavoring reminds me of it.
Other signs of spring have become evident in the past few days. More runners are jogging about the neighborhood. I see the ultra-faithful runners all winter, but they are covered from head to toe in insulated garb. One reliable sign of the oncoming spring equinox is the sight of runners without hats and face masks, runners actually wearing running suits making it possible to recognize their faces.
The oncoming spring and snow melt bring about the old question of what to wear on my feet. A small glacier that refuses to melt covers my driveway. Winter boots are an absolute necessity to walk from my house to my car.
However, once I reach my vehicle, I usually head for town where don’t need heavy boots since most of the snow has melted. One sure sign of spring for me is this in-between footwear stage.
Another sign of spring I was delighted to hear was the low rumble of pipes and deep throb of the 1946 street rod engine as Dick drove down Highway 61 in trial run. He’s spent almost every weekend since Christmas getting in running order, and hearing its comfortable noise brings to mind the Back to the Fifties Car Show we hope to attend in June. What could be more spring-like than that?
Several things.
Woodpeckers drumming in the woods, snow melting off the eaves, the sweet low spring call of a chickadee and one final omen.
As I wrote this column I had the strangest urge to make potato salad, and when I finished, I did.
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