Shouldn’t there be drabs as well? Maybe, but I did that not too many Thursdays ago.

“Drib is known in some English, Irish and Scottish dialects from at least the eighteenth century, meaning an inconsiderable quantity or a drop and most probably is a variant form of drip or drop,” says the always interesting World Wide Words.

“The experts are undecided whether the second half is a mere echo of the first, as in reduplicated compounds like helter-skelter, see-saw and hurly-burly, or if drab is a real word in its own right.”

It is a word, but in the sense of dull. The Thursday Drabs would suggest that I passed the day listlessly, but that wasn’t the case at all. For one thing, going out for a walk is now pretty easy and, except when the wind kicks up, not too bad. All the ice has vanished from almost all of the sidewalks. Walking the dog is mostly a pleasure again.

These February scenes are gone as well. Some snow still endures, forming snow archipelagos on lawns, especially in shady northern exposures, but there’s a little less of it every day.

Also good to see: croci emerging from the earth. Some in our back yard, and some especially vigorous patches on the grounds of Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary, where we sometimes walk the dog.

Not long ago, I found a 12 oz. jar of preserves tucked away deep in our canned (and jarred) goods pantry: cherry raspberry preserves, product of Brownwood Farms of Williamsburg, Michigan. That sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it for a moment.

The lid, though tight, sported a light coating of dust. That doesn’t bode well for the edibility of the edibles inside.

Then it occurred to me. We’d bought these preserves way up in Grand Traverse County in the summer of 2007 during a visit. Naturally, this made me a little leery of even opening the thing, much less eating it. But I got it open and didn’t see (or more importantly) smell anything amiss.

Been eating my 2000s-vintage preserves on various kinds of bread since then, here in the 2020s, and it’s delicious. After all, Grand Traverse is justly known for its cherries and raspberries and other berries. I’m glad the preserve was literally true in the case of these preserves.