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When man dreams in broad daylight it may seem that his brain hasn’t anything much to do. But by now it has become clear that during such a period of stillness the brain isn’t at all less active than for instance when you are driving a car – although the latter seems to be a so much more attention-demanding occupation. During stillness parts of the brain are really quite active but exactly what they deal with on their own is not clear at all. Just as it isn’t altogether clear what the brain is doing during sleep. But that it is busy with something is revealed in the morning when you wake up, hungry. The body rests but the brain still uses up energy. Briefly every fourth or fifth of the mouthfuls that a person takes goes to feed the brain.

March is like a period of stillness in nature too, and quite as with the stillness of the brain it is not at all as if nothing were happening. Under the snow and in the snow much goes on.

In a Chinese tale scholars are told that a wise boy lives in a village. They went there. And among other things asked the boy how many stars there were in heaven. The boy didn’t think long, answered that as many as there are hairs on the head. The scholars marvelled at the wisdom of the boy. But of course it is clear now that there are after all many more stars in heaven than there are hairs on a head. At least on the head of a scholar.

Astronomers have determined that there are as many stars in the sky as snowflakes in the yard in the month of March. And anyone who doesn’t believe this can go out in the yard and count. The snow in March is as a book where much can be read. From it can for instance be seen what trees are busy with even at the end of winter. Spruce needles, lichen bits, twigs, sprigs, cones and who knows what more can be counted on the snow in innumerable numbers, and all melt themselves ever deeper down into the snow in the ever warmer rays of the sun.

At southwards-turned house walls and even at the edges of the snowdrifts landscapes form that are comparable to some mighty mountain range  - at least when the Backyard Potterer mentally turns himself into a tiny Tom Thumb the shapes of this snow landscape are really impressive and even a little scary.

The birds fly around their little feeder house and it looks as if they snatch seeds there just for the pleasure of it – the winter horror seems to be at an end. Even the dogs further away in the village seem to bark just for pleasure. How ever is it possible that any little bird is still alive after this cold winter?

The first dripping eave brings one’s thoughts to a singing thrush that may soon arrive here in the yard. Surely it will arrive here because where is the limit of the yard? Does it end at the fence or at the quiet bend in the brook a little farther away, that already shows that it has some flowing water – or even at the seashore, although now in March there is no proper sea, reminds rather of a man-forsaken artificial landscape, where at some time, in better circumstances, something at that time valuable has been excavated.

The shadow of the pine top still falls on the window of the house, the midday sun doesn’t yet reach up to shine above it – it is as if the pine has been set to guard the house against spring. But the gulls already fly boldly now singing under a sky of an indescribable colour, and the tit of course greets them with its tsirr-rirr-rirr.

March snow is readable and the animals are readable too. Suddenly a company of birds arrive in the yard – or is it a gang? They fly around the bare branches of the three-forked birch, maybe they look for help from the tree – the buds give strength. Because there are no mosquitoes – which is one of the advantages of March. The birds are redpolls that – having arrived from Latvia or from even further away – now are on their way to Finland. The birds, it must be said, see more colours than people do. We see only three colours, there are sensors in the retina of the eye only for these. Red, green and blue. Birds see ultraviolet too. And that is why the redpoll male and female are almost similar to our eyes but the redpolls themselves see the sexes quite differently coloured. So that the yard too sees itself quite differently from how the eyes of the Backyard Potterer see it.

Of course the blackbirds are in place, a willow tit has settled down hunched in the spruce, ruffled up as if it were thrush-sized itself. The sun melts the snow around each tree trunk, as if it were building a nest for the tree. Somewhere a woodpecker rattles away, don’t know if it is a new one.

A pine cone flops down on the snow, who knows from where – strange how it can have held on to the tree for so long. When a pine cone falls on your head don’t take it badly. You might rather take into your head to study it more in detail. How are the cone scales arranged? Not at all haphazardly but in a regular pattern. And this pattern isn’t the simplest. The pine scales go towards the tip in a clockwise spiral seen from the trunk end.

The seeds in a sunflower bloom, the waves of the sand dunes or the fur patterns of tigers or leopards aren’t haphazard either. According to mathematicians they have an amazing similarity between themselves. The patterns are created in systems that are exposed to some kind of external stress. In 1917 mathematical biologist D´Arcy Wentworth Thompson published the book „On Growth and Form” a work that turned out to be powerfully influential and in which he maintained that biological form is created  rather due to the laws of physics than as a result of evolution. Many biological and non-biological forms and structures are the result of the effects of physical forces. The attractive patterns of plants are the fruit of the joint effects of mechanical forces and biochemical processes.

The patterns arise when the symmetry of the system breaks down. Plants with related patterns have similar symmetries – not that they are always built up from the same elements.