Spring is here. The ice went out of Lake Tomah on Sunday morning, March 21, close to the official start of Spring. Early Sunday morning witnessed about 30 acres of ice, but the wind was out of the SSW, blowing the ice mass against the northern shore. By noon, the last remnants of ice were gone. We’ve kept track of the dates when Lake Tomah freezes over and when the ice disappears, since we moved here in 1972. The earliest the ice was gone was March 3, 2000 and the latest was April 26, 2013.

The sedum is coming up on the north side of the house. There is no sign of Paul’s Glory, a plant given to us by Jennie Zeitler in memory of our son, Paul, who passed away in 2017. The leaf color changes throughout the season.

Among the outdoor Springtime chores is dethatching the front lawn. I have a dethatching blade on an old push-type Lawn Boy lawnmower. The blade has a 3-inch prong on each end that digs down into the lawn and digs out dead grass. The hard part is the follow-up raking.

Touch-up paint on the garage is another annual task. The garage is coming up on 50 years old, and bits of paint on the siding flake off over time. That was a Tuesday job, with bright sunshine and mid-50s temperatures. I was serenaded by a Mourning Dive perched on the neighbor’s house, every five seconds with the familiar soft “perch-coo” followed by three louder coos.

The maple trees in the back yard are coming alive. The buds are bursting and soon small green leaves will emerge. A month ago, Tomah city crews cut many diseased ash trees in Butts Park affording us and our neighbors a more panoramic view of the Lake and I cut brush along the lakeshore. Already we see people fishing from the shore.