They like to say of March that it comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, but Mother Earth is changing and scrambling all of the old truisms and conventional wisdoms of the past. I read the Farmer’s Almanac the other day and it seems to be having a meltdown. And even though people love to quote it to me all of the time, I don’t think they’ve read it recently. It is way off.

The old wisdom does not seem to apply any longer. The weather is not really predictable, not be science, not by old bones.

Winter has gone off the tracks. It comes and goes, hides and appears, growls and bites, then purrs and wags. It is like a fickle lover, sometimes it flirts, sometimes it sulks, sometimes it hurts. The old farmers are going crazy, they plan their entire lives around certainties that are no longer certain.

Last week, we were walking in the woods and it was 50 degrees, this morning the wind and snow and cold were so biting and intense we had to cut short our walk and come to thaw out. My fingers still hurt. This weekend frigid cold, the slick weather people on TV – anyone who wears glasses on TV is faking it for affect – can get hysterical again, it will be well below zero on Sunday, time to grain the animals for the first time this winter.

Last year, it was just awful at this time, we were shoveling every day and freezing all the time. This year, if somebody told me it was still Spring, I might believe it. But not today, winter is back in our lives.

Every day, it snows a bit and the ground is getting covered, the animals are running out of grazing again. We put hay bales on the ground near the house to keep the frost-free from freezing, I think we will not see grass or the ground for awhile. On the other hand, it will be in the 40’s next Tuesday. Winter is slick and coy.

Mother Earth, ever eager to get our attention, is messing with our minds.