It is still March, right?

There were several signs hereabouts yesterday that the weather had taken a wonderfully wacky turn. For one thing, the thermometer almost inched up to 60 degrees.

Pedestrians suddenly materialized - a rare enough sight in central Maine at this time of year - and many of them were decked out in shirtsleeves or t-shirts. Gone was the mountain of frozen curbside crud that had made parking in front of our house feel like an off-road experience.

It was ice out on the Kennebec River, which had been frozen a few days ago. The only hint of that fading era was an occasional small, lonely floe sailing toward oblivion with the tide.

But the real proof that spring had decided to ignore the calendar, at least temporarily, was to be found one street over from ours. As I walked one of the dogs around the block yesterday morning, I noticed that a neighbor's previously forlorn clothesline sported a full load of skirts, socks, and other pieces of clothing. The freshly washed laundry fluttered in the balmy breeze. On March 8. Remarkable.