Take heart, spring is upon us. If today's excuse to consume too much corned beef, a pint of stout or something stronger in honor of Saint Patrick isn't enough, there are always eclectic and eccentric celebrations of spring in southeastern Connecticut.

The Vernal Equinox, when the length of daylight and evening are closest to being equal in the northern hemisphere, usually falls on March 20. This year, spring officially starts around 6:45 p.m. on Friday.

The local arm of the Connecticut Chapter of the Sierra Club plans to welcome spring tomorrow evening at Ocean Beach Park in New London by properly drowning a snowman in Long Island Sound. That's after a light supper, served in the Nautilus Lounge, and group readings of favorite spring-themed poetry.

"Every culture has celebrated spring; there's been a lot of burning or drowning of snowmen over the ages" says Louise Fabrykiewicz, the group's long-standing education coordinator. She has staged various welcome-to-spring socials over the past 15 years on docks and shores of Gales Ferry, Noank, Stonington Borough and New London.

Bonfires are a frequent theme across northern European countries. Fabrykiewicz is particularly intrigued with the Swiss tradition of stuffing a white cotton snowman with fire crackers and sending him off, in effigy.

There's also the less violent practice of stacking three scoops of vanilla ice cream and finishing off the snowman with a spoon. She's found Russian tales of serving up pancakes as symbols of the sun in warmer times to come.

Wednesday's observance will be a social and literary event. Fabrykiewicz has collected 37 poems about spring from over the ages, from the English romanticist William Wordsworth and Victorian poet Robert Browning to America's free-versing Walt Whitman and Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whitter, to quirky and innovative E.E. Cummings. There also are works from Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth and children's authors Mary Mapes Dodge and Aileen Fisher. John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, also wrote poetry.

"I think after this winter that we're going to drown the snowman with gusto," says Roberta Paro, chair of the Connecticut Chapter of Sierra Club, who lives in Norwich. While Sierra Club groups in Hartford and Old Saybrook are more active with hikes and summer kayaking, she says this event has become a signature ritual for the southeastern group. It also holds meetings the second Wednesday of the month at Connecticut College.

For early risers and hikers, there's the annual sunrise dance of the Westerly Morris Men on the summit of Lantern Hill in North Stonington on Friday, March 20. It's a 10- to 20-minute hike up the hill, and sunrise is set for about 6:51 a.m., so organizers recommend arriving by 6 a.m. and will start the hike up at 6:20 a.m.

The English Morris is the modern take on a primitive pre-Christian ceremonial of ritual dance and drama to insure and celebrate the renewal of spring. The Westerly group was founded in 1974 by Peter Leibert and is one of the oldest continuously active Morris teams in the United States.

Organizers of the vernal equinox hike up Lantern Hill credit Betsy Storms of the Pequotespos Outing Club of Mystic for starting the hike. Morris dancing was added in 1987, so 2015 is at least the 29th consecutive year of such a celebration of spring at that location.

When she's not gardening, Suzanne hosts a weekly radio show, "CT Outdoors," on WLIS 1420 AM and WMRD 1150 AM on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. and from 6:30 to 7:30 pm, or listen to archived shows in the On Demand section of www.wliswmrd.net.