Musings - on the editor's mind

April, weather wise, left the western Skagit Valley as it sometimes does: overcast, cool, rain overnight Sunday and dripping into Monday morning. Monday, was in fact perfectly average: the morning temperature started at 50 degrees F at WSU’s Mount Vernon weather station. My phone app says temperatures hit 60 degrees F around 5 p.m.

This April it rained 20 days, including the last three. In 2017 it also rained about 20 days, though total rainfall was about three inches against the nearly five inches this year. This April was cooler, though highs last week went above 70 degrees F. It never hit 70 last April. It was much warmer and drier, remember? It hit 80 degrees F mid-month. There were only nine days of rain.

Three years of data is not much to go on.

In 2008 it frosted at least three April mornings. Highs more than once went above 70, though 40 degrees F was a mid-month high.

But whatever the weather was, or felt like, farm activity tells you, way beyond the tulips, that spring is in full bloom.

Maybe because farmers couldn’t get on their soaked fields – Dave Hedlin said he hardly turned a wheel the first three weeks – they were working late last Friday, and other nights. A tractor was plowing across Best down the road from Christianson’s at 9 p.m. and a pump was running past 10 p.m. at the Fohn Farms on Chilberg.

Earlier in the week the first cutting of hay came off Fohn’s and east of Best across from Valentine. The pink plastic wrapped bales at Mesman’s reminds this city kid of fiberglass insulation

Two Sunday’s ago, a tractor was turning soil across from Roozengaarde tulips and tourists on Calhoun Road. The cornstalked field at the Chilberg curve had turned into chocolate-brown soil days earlier.

The sun has been climbing north along the backbone of the Cascades all month. Six weeks past the equinox and its rising on the north side of east, sliding steadily toward Bellingham.

Then there’s Mt. Baker. Surprise. Couldn’t be whiter with all that precipitation, cloud covered for most of the month. But then, almost seven days in a row of its presence. That was a gift. As were the Olympic Mountains’ appearance. Once the clouds departed, they crowned the southwestern Skagit Valley, absolutely towering over Whidbey Island.

And one day soon the last remnants of snow on the mountain tops east of Mount Vernon will slip away, unnoticed, gone.

Spring has much more than sprung. It’s almost half over.