04.01.17

This was last evening–at 8:45 p.m.  One of my weather blogs predicted on Thursday:  “A beautiful day on Friday after one of the worst Winters in years.”  And, a beautiful day it was.   March truly went out like a lamb, after having had twice as much rainfall as normal.  It’s hard to fathom that June, still two months from now, is our rainiest month of the year.  Never mind.  If nothing else, Spring teaches us gratitude for every bit of warmth and sunshine which finds its way to us, after the long dark Winter.  It reminds me of how I feel when I think I’ve lost something important, like my phone or a credit card, and when I re-discover it, the joy and elation is so profound that it was almost worth the pain.

March is such a messy transition between seasons with its snow and rain and mud and wind.  Once we hit April, remembering the nursery rhymes about April showers bringing May flowers, it feels like we’ve hit our Spring stride.  Every day, the daffodil and tulip leaves grow higher and higher out of the ground.  The pussy-willow fuzzy seeds are puffing out at the tips of tree branches.  The grass gets greener by the day.  The last of the ice is off the ponds and we have a bet going in our house that the dirty snow piles will be gone by tax day.  According to NOAA, we are in an “active spring pattern”, which calls for 36 hours of rain, then 24 hours of clearing, then 36 hours of moisture, and on and on, so on and so forth, as far out as they can see.  But, there’s real reason for hope at this point, even as poets have called April the “cruelest month”.  I don’t want to be over-confident, but Don’s going to take the snow tires off and I think I’ll remove one of the blankets from our bed next time I change the sheets.  Daring to say it aloud, I think we’ve made it, once again, to the other side.

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day.
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
a cloud come over the sunlit arch,
And wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.”
–  Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud Time, 1926