One of the New England months I miss so much here in Arizona is March. Why? I don’t know, I guess I always liked the weather extremes you’d get. After a long, cold winter, with the snow piled up all over the place, it was exciting to get that first big pre-Spring rainstorm that would really start working on the snow piles. March was a month for flood watches and warnings, as the rain and the melting snowpack meant that any day, you’d see on the news the infamous Spicket River in Methuen doing it’s annual romp through the town.

March was also a month for fog – fog during rainstorms, and fog when that stretch of days finally hit where the temps would finally nudge above freezing and stay there throughout the night, melting the snow in the woods and swamps. I miss the fog. (We don’t get fog here in the Valley of the Sun. Smog, for sure. But fog, no.) March was also the month when you’d start hearing the peepers out in the woods – little frogs telling you that, even if there were still snow all around and a chill in the air, Spring was on the way. Of course, March can be a pretty nasty month as well, as Friday’s Boston area forecast would seem to indicate.

And how could I forget St. Patrick’s Day with the Goodboys. Talk about your “high holy days!”

Here in Arizona, the heat is on. Just as I suspected, the high temps sure didn’t stay in the ’80s for long. It wasn’t long ago our highs were in the ’70s, but the past couple of days it’s been just above 90, and Friday we’re headed for 94, Saturday even higher. And let the word go forward that last Saturday, March 10, the day of my “religious experience”, was also the day the A/C went on for the first time.

March may be a month of extremes back home, but here, it looks awfully like an early start to a long, hot summer. And you know what that means here in the Richard household…