January has come and gone. This writer has been given another birthday to look forward for rounding towards 80. The CEO of this outfit has gathered 1099 forms like a greedy squirrel. Don't want the IRS coming ‘round here asking questions.
"Nawsiree…!"
Punxsutawney Phil crawled out to look for his shadow somewhere in a Pennsylvania village and allowed those selfish Yankees to hold him up for the hordes and cameras to see his fat little self mid-slumber. This year Fat Phil blinked, the top hats declared an early Spring, and here we wait.
February is shortened to 28 days for three years. Then the fourth year, February gets 29 days. Folks born on the 29th gets shorted three birthdays. A childhood friend had a February 29th birthday and was born the year before me. On my 4th birthday, she was still one year old. The upside/downside to all that confusion was she ate birthday cake with me every year on January 31st, and I had to wait for four years sharing birthday cake with her.
February will allow sap to rise. The first signs of sap rising will show in the limbs of maple trees just before the red buds will show flutter and more brilliant reddening by the day. The smell of a controlled burn in the forest can be enjoyed for days in February. Best is watching a nighttime burn through the pine trees. February has woodlands showing green shoots from controlled burns. In those newly burned-over places is where the wild violets can be found. That is the most wonderful blessing of February.
February brings out trimmers and rakes and burning of winters debris. The wild onions are standing like green needles in winter dried grasses. Mowing of the lawn will release the smell of those wild onions and brings joy to labor. If one stands still in the woods during February the winds up high in the trees will allow the ancients to talk. The talk cannot be understood, but Grandma Minnie told me that and I believed her. I love to listen to the trees talking in February. Y'all go into the woods and listen…
So, the month of February is filled with planting fruit trees, English peas, and around our area a few Jack Frost mornings. Flu is shared amongst the school children by way of cough and nose wiping on backs of friends’ sweaters while standing in the lunch line at school. Feverish teachers spray and wipe and pray and fall into bed at night worrying what will happen next.
Heart shaped boxes of chocolates have been stacked in tilting piles at Walmart since New Year’s Day. Florists hang ‘Help Wanted’ signs in windows along with little fat cupids shooting arrows through red foil hearts. Love is for sale to the highest bidder in February. Hunter's wives pitch warnings about all those lonely weekends spent taking on the role of single parenting. Hunter husbands will remember and fully understand the chill sometimes around mid-afternoon on Valentine’s Day. Wives and girlfriends and the hopeful will sulk and hissy fit and weep, depending.
Half wilted posies and out of date chocolates and stringy sleepwear will fix February mid-month. Some blessed ones will be gifted with a trinket from the jewelry store. A few brave hearts will bend a knee to ask the question that will cost him a payment plan for life.
The days will linger, the weather will change in mid freeze. The peach trees will show us buds and blooms, bluebirds will flutter and rebuild old nests, bees will slowly dip and hum. Pines will drop millions of tons of yellow pollen onto shiny cars and clog sinuses back to Abraham. Jasmine will show yellow blooms climbing on vines to the tops of trees that are winter buck naked.
Ponds will come alive with the sounds of millions of little croakers in the slanting of afternoon sun. Old men will drag out the cane poles, untangle the lines, restring new bobbers and rearrange their fishing hooks in rusted little plastic holders. Hope floats in the waning of February as those old men mistake eye floaters for Mayflies. Old puttering-about gardeners will spend time in the Seed & Feed stores looking for seeds of peas, butterbeans, okra, squash, watermelon, tomato and most important of all, those seed potatoes.
"Taters have to be cut and ready for the furrow."
And so it goes…
February brings the decadence of Mardi Gras topped off by Joe Cain. Moon pies and beads are flung and mashed and scattered in the streets of Mobile and New Orleans. Parades of gaudy floats are rolled in burgs all along the Gulf Coast.
Colleges declare Spring Break and the rush is on. Hotels are booked months in advance; beaches are filled with winter-white flesh that burns to water blisters by sundown from the sun and winds. Credit cards are maxed out, emergency rooms are on high alert due to balcony surfing, parents get those dreaded calls from jails and broken-hearted children. They have succumbed to spring fever and it ain't pretty.
February finally eases into March where winter will end in mid-month. March winds will blow and blow and blow, but it cannot compete with the wonderful, beautiful, expectancy of February. February is a mix, February is short, February is the month of sap rising; but best of all, God made February to help hold the year together.
