The Vernal Equinox: Our Easter

We slept with the windows open, the night before our Easter. Since we celebrate our Easter on the vernal equinox, or the first day of spring (for consistency, we keep to March 21) in Maine, sleeping with windows open all night is a big deal. I don't just mean a single window open a crack in the bedroom, I mean entire windows, all over the house, open. All night. Outside, the grass is greening, daffodils are blooming and perennials are already forming into lush mounds in the garden. How different this was from last year's Easter.



We woke the kids early so they could find their baskets and eggs before Olivia had to leave for her Driver's Ed class. Baskets found, the kids took a few moments to admire their little treasures, found within.






Spying some eggs in the garden, the kids began their search. The Hare always leaves eggs in unusual places; inside a shell, in the U of a horseshoe, nestled in cedars, in the crooks of trees.








While Olivia was in class, Alex prepared two quiches and some deviled eggs and I baked a cake and Adam spent the morning exploring a new game and enjoying the sunshine. Since it was so nice out at lunch time, in the mid-80s, we got the umbrella out and had our lunch on the deck.




That has got to be the earliest in the year, we've been able to enjoy a meal in comfort, outside. I'm not the only one noticing this odd weather pattern, of course. While the warmth and green is welcome in some ways, it is rather worrying, especially when fruit trees look to be about to bloom, and the threat of frost lingers for nearly two more months. Even more disconcerting, is the threat of minimal snow-pack through winter and ever earlier and warmer springs that give way to immediate summers. (Seems rather timely, that we'll most likely be getting to the theaters at the end of the week to see The Hunger Games, set in the dystopia of Panem, born out of ecological disaster.)

On the flip side of this March Madness, (as this spring heatwave has been named), we will be grateful for the days we don't have to turn on the heat, we'll enjoy the extra time spent outside, the sunshine and warmth, the windows open day and night and we'll cross our fingers, that if the peach blooms early, and it looks like it will, that we don't get a killing frost. Certainly, this will be an Easter to remember.