Early spring late this year?

Is spring on track this year, or are we slow to spring up?  I'm wondering.  The ice went out this week, on the 25th--that was the last day of ice at the foot of the lake.  That's not really late so maybe I'm just looking for spring in the wrong places (like, leaves on trees).  The maple trees are fully budded but leafless.  Lilac leaves are tiny but noticeable, barely.  The alders have small (very) leaves.  The woods are not even close to being green, the pussy willows have gone by and are very yellow.  Maybe that should be considered the North Country's version of forsythia, it's almost that bright.

Anyway life goes on and is good.  I had a meeting with the construction crew and board members who are all working on the alcove to the Archives.  They included me after the plans were made, which didn't offend me but they had no clue as to the importance of the card catalog and were going to treat it pretty much as an afterthought.  I explained that, as archaic as it is, it is the ONLY index to the contents of the collection, so maybe it could be placed prominently in the alcove with easy access for people doing research.  Ahhhh, yes, they got it.  "Thanks for pointing that out, we're glad you were here."  Dodged a bullet on that one.  I laugh at myself for thinking the card catalog is so important, but it is.  Until we figure out a way to digitize it or develop and online index or something, the card catalog is our key and the only way we have access to the contents of the collection, short of pawing through 6000 photos (well, bad example, those are being scanned) and the manuscript collection and the still-valuable vertical file.  There's so much that could be done with that collection--will I live long enough or remain interested in it long enough to accomplish much?   The scanning of the photos is huge, we're closing in on the end of that project, have done more than 4000.  They still need to be mounted on the Web somehow, that's the next part of the project, right now they're still only accessible from within the archives, on the computer there (and of course indexed in the card catalog).  Oh well, these are intense things to ponder at 2 a.m.

Meanwhile there's the weather, rainy and dismal though the temp is 42 so it's not miserable.  We're expecting snow this weekend but that's not a drastic event, it won't be much and it won't last long.  Just a reminder that no, this is not always a friendly environment.  We don't have tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis, we're lucky.  I heard a red-winged blackbird in Keene Valley the other day.  The purple finches have shown up and are very purple.  There's at least one loon on the lake, I heard it's wail this week.

Life is good.  Spring is happening.  And I still have 2 cords of firewood left.