Tom's Life Bits

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===== Carolina blues =====

With March's arrival, the heavenly hour hand we know as the Big Dipper now appears in the evening skies standing into the vertical, with the handle just now returning from its wintering grounds below the horizon. It's a sure sign that spring trails but a few degrees beyond the setting of the evening sun.

This translates as cold rain and wind, well mixed with sunshine -- unfailing indicators of pending changes coming together.

Fresh-washed wintery skies are beginning to clear, revealing a month wrapped in sunshine. Flowers come into bloom. The iris awakens, crocuses show color, daffodils stand tall and bright. But the most important part of March's arrival is not the opening of leaf and flower, nor the rush of wind. It is the return of the blue.

Above us, it's the brilliance of bluebird-blue heavens, rising above the trees and toward the sun. Bluebird days.

And bluebirds themselves. Only a handful of birds have been granted the authority to wear the blue coat of royalty: the bluebird, the indigo bunting, the blue-backed parula warbler and the blue-backed grosbeak.

The blue jay makes a claim, but his title is a little shaky. His cloak is more of a blue-gray than true blue. The same may be said of our great blue heron, and the kingfishers.

It's the incomparable bluebird, singing its songs of spring, that first announces there are grand changes under way, even while the muddy newborn month of March has been left on our doorstep.

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