MARCH'S MARCHING BAND IS PASSING BY

March seems to shout orders, using its own name. "Hup, one, two, three. March!" If anything or anyone doesn't fall into line at the appointed time he is just a looker-on as the parade passes by, green flags and kites flying.

If the nursery companies don't make their seed racks blossom with pretty pictured flowers and vegetables, don't have a barrel of onion sets to run one's hand through, another barrel of grass seed exuding an inimitable faint odor, cabbage plants to finger and study, they're out of it. Good-by. Maybe next time.

If gardeners don't pick up a lump of soil feel the good grit of it, the fine fibers of last year's roots, they've missed a step in the march and may get run over by those marching in time behind them. They should see if the good earth crumbles in their hands, and, if so, get out their plows or spades. If it wads up into a moist ball, they'll step aside for a little while and join the last of the parade.

The hardware store owners should listen for the on-coming Sousas and get out their shiny new spades, hoes, rakes, trowels and line them up like good soldiers ready to join in as the band passes by.

Mentally and playfully, I put legs, arms and faces on the fertilizer and potting soil bags so they look somewhat like aberrant California Raisins, dancing along to the march tune, singing hip songs.

No one needs to kick the creek banks or stomp through the low wet places to awaken the Hyla crucifiers and tell them to start tuning up. They know.

The redwings know too. No one has to send a messenger to the southlands to alert them. They come along on time and in order, joining in with their cheerful "o-ka-lees." flitting in and of the parade like clowns making some unrehearsed loops or cartwheels.

The daffodils blow their yellow trumpets and it is not an uncertain sound. The earthworms hear it or feel it and come upstairs from their cold winter quarters. Turn over a spade full of soil where you've dumped some coffee grounds and you'll find several of them doing wiggly-biggly Louis Armstrong jazz arpeggios.

I march in March's Band too, clipping off dead foliage of the Siberian iris in a sort of one-two motion. Click, click! While the band marches in place, I stop to admire the newly planted gift witch hazel bush, it's funny little orange-red blossoms doing the boogy-woogy in a stiff wind. A handsome addition to the parade is the witch hazel.

One thinks of running water in March. I go on one of my favorite drives to the west, stop by a familiar creek and find that, yes, the water in running, splash-happy, like some miniature, challenging whitewater rapids. I put in my by "boat," a nearby dead leaf, and watch it negotiate the rapids and emerge on the calm water below. There's some lesson here I think -- the leaf, a thing of nature, just letting go to ride with another thing of nature and coming out through rough times, intact. But I don't have time to contemplate and come up with wisely coined truth statements or words to live by. I must get on with the march, lest I become only an observer.

Flippety-flop goes my head scarf as the cold winds coming down from the north collide with the warmer ones coming up from the south. Such collisions cause noisy sky things that culminate in the vernal equinox, after which the March band begins to disappear around a corner, its members having reached the calmer waters after the whitewater rapids, content to loll a while since their wake-up trumpets have been sounded.

REJOICE!