Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A Snowstorm Is Coming...

...but I'm not upset, although most people around here are. We're supposed to be well into the lamb part of March by now, and instead, we're stuck in the lion's maw. Fleetingly, the temperature climbs up to 40F, maybe 43F at high noon, then dips into the teens at night. The fish pond is still a block of ice, and the heated waterer for the hens is going day and night. Still, as far as I'm concerned, it's spring. The hens know it, too: I'm getting four eggs a day, instead of two.

Forget the temperature; look at the light. It's six p.m. right now, and bright blessed daylight outside. The mornings are less traumatic, too. In winter I wake up like Quasimodo, hunched and blinking and prey to existential despair. These days, the light from our east-facing window hits my lidded retinas well before seven, and I wake and doze and mumble to Wolfie to lie back down, and when the alarm finally rings I have grass and peepers, not Jean-Paul Sartre, on my mind.

But now, to (almost) everyone's despair, there's a blizzard forecast for Friday. Several inches of snow. Impassable roads for a while. Same old, same old. Except that we're close enough to gardening season that I can easily look on this as a last respite before chores to come. A time to fold laundry, finish a clay piece, do some writing, practice the G sharp on the recorder, make blueberry bread with the last of last summer's blueberries. Also pay a medical bill, check out some friend-recommended websites, clean out my in-box, finish that crocheted poncho.

Unfortunately, temperatures in the 40s are forecast for Saturday, by which time I won't be even halfway through my list. Winter of 2011, hear my lonesome plea: won't you stay a little longer?

11 comments :

  1. the light does make a huge difference, i agree. it's been cold here--17 degrees every single morning when i get up, even though each day we're promised that the next day will be better. it was about 39 degrees today--sunny and cold. no snow in the forecast as far as i know, but i'm not checking.

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  2. You are so baaaaddddd. It's cold and gray down here too but no snow, thank goodness. Light does make such a difference.

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  3. No you may not wish for it to stay winter. :^) Here we are soooo tired of the spring snow. I keep thinking we're done and then.

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  4. "Forget the temperature; look at the light," you said.

    Nooooooooooooo. Sob. Daylight saving ends this weekend. (Surely some melodrama is permitted in these circumstances?!)

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  5. The end of daylight saving affects me a lot--negatively, that is. A couple of years ago I tried changing the clocks but getting up at the same time as in summer, and I seem to recall that it helped. I think I'll do it again this fall.

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  6. No. Sorry. Fingers in ears. Any other year, I'd agree with you - every other year I've waved the winter flag and led the Anti-Winterwhiners in a rousing chorus of A Few More Days of Cosy Inwardness but not this time, not this year. This year the light mocks me. I'm cold, I'm tired, I need green, and I need sun.

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  7. Er...Daylight saving time BEGAN nearly three weeks ago, on March 13.

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  8. I think you're in the majority. I'm just dreading all the gardening pressure.

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  9. Anonymous, we're talking about the southern hemisphere.

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  10. I have tickets to a play Friday night and need to be at a funeral in NH on Tuesday (in the midst of the NEXT alleged storm). I am NOT a happy camper.

    But G sharp? You go!

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