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Category: seasons

March Mizzles

March Mizzles

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March begins with low skies and sodden soil, with raindrops pinging puddles. The ground is full of water; it can hold no more. But still the rain falls. It follows the snow and the sleet and the freezing rain, all of which left their mark. 

Last night’s drops drummed the roof. This morning’s precipitation ventures forth more vaguely. Will it shower? Will it drizzle? Perhaps it will remain indecisive — and mizzle.

In the meantime, moisture pools on sidewalks, beads on branches, saturates the air with mist and haze. If today were to dress for the weather, it would need a poncho and galoshes. 

Welcome, March. I hope you brought an umbrella. 

Sixty-Four!

Sixty-Four!

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The spring weather that was promised yesterday more than materialized. It reached 64, way above the 59 that was originally predicted and warm enough to take my laptop out to the deck and work there for a few hours.  

What a boost to soak up the rays of the still-faint late-winter sun, to hear the wind chimes clang in the unaccustomedly warm breeze.  It was just a taste of what’s to come, but it broke a deadlock of sorts.  

Winter has less of a hold on us now. We may still have cold rain, chill wind, freezing temperatures. But the witch hazel tree, responding to yesterday’s prompts, has burst into bloom.  It’s the earliest harbinger of spring in our yard, and I’m glad for its vivid evidence that yesterday was not a dream. 

(The witch hazel tree photographed in an earlier, snowier winter)

Fifty-Nine!

Fifty-Nine!

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The weather folks tell me that today’s high will be 59. Fifty-nine! I stare at my phone, at the sun icons and the numbers below them, which tell me that at 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. it will be 59. I figure if I look long enough those numbers might turn from 59 to 60. 

Sixty would be nice. It’s not much more than 60 inside right now (the nighttime temps still prevailing). Sixty would feel balmy and Florida-like to me, stuck mostly inside at the tail end of what’s beginning to feel like a very long winter.

Fifty-nine, on the other hand, still has a chapped, windswept feel. 

Before finishing this post, I walk out through the garage to pick up the newspaper at the end of the driveway. It feels pretty darn warm already. I can feel the difference in my bones. There’s a skip in my step as I walk back in the house.

I try the phone one more time. It now tells me that at 4 p.m. it will be 61! That’s more like it. 

Floating

Floating

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It’s President’s Day, a celebration conflation closer this year to Lincoln’s day (February 12) than to Washington’s (February 22). 

Up until last year it was a holiday on my work calendar. This year it has been nixed to give us one floating holiday, which we can use to celebrate a birthday, religious observance or whatever we want. 

I decided to take my floating holiday today, since I’d already been planning on it and since it is, for me, more of a “Beat the Winter Doldrums Day” than anything else. 

With one ice storm melting away and another gearing up for later in the week, I plan to hunker down, to read, write and organize (not too much of the latter, I bet). In other words… to float.

All That Glitters

All That Glitters

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Walks have been slower lately, both to baby an aching foot and stay clear of icy patches on the street. I miss the faster pace. I see more of the landscape this way, true, but the landscape of late winter is not always one on which you want to linger. 

Odd remnants of leftover snow, garbage cans seemingly abandoned by the side of the road, piles of pruned and discarded azalea branches. I’m reminded of late winter in Chicago, when the snow would melt and my enthusiasm for warmer weather would be tempered by seeing what had been hiding beneath the white stuff for weeks.

The suburban landscape is more forgiving, though, the ratio of green to gray easier on the eye, and there have been times lately when the salt crystals on the road gleam like so many rough diamonds. At my slower pace I can see them sparkle. 

Walker Meets Ice

Walker Meets Ice

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These days, walks are timed for optimal warmth and light. They must also flow around work projects and meetings, which is how I found myself looking for strips of pavement amid the icy patches on our street yesterday about 3 p.m. 

The snow had finally stopped, which wasn’t altogether welcome — it was fun living inside a snow globe for a few days — and a stiff breeze was drying off the wet parts of the road. The problem was that it was freezing the slush almost as quickly. 

I’m a fearless walker … until ice enters the picture. I have a healthy respect for it and will be glad when it melts away. Until then, I will make my way through the landscape very slowly … if at all! 

(Above: where ice should stay, in my humble opinion!) 

Snowscape

Snowscape

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The snowy Sunday quietly and steadily remained a snowy Monday, and has now — wonder of wonders! — become a snowy Tuesday. 

As I write, the flurries that made it difficult to keep a path clean for Copper down the deck stairs (he’s old and slips a lot) have continued flying. The railing I scraped off yesterday has at least another inch or two of white coating. 

Best of all, the winter wonderland brought to us by 28 degrees and enough cold aloft to produce these flakes still falling remains a vision, a snowscape, a sight for sore eyes. 

Snowy Sunday

Snowy Sunday

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It’s not just that the snow fell, finally, the first significant accumulation in two years, but that it fell on Sunday, when many of us could enjoy it. Into the snow went dogs and babies (two of the latter for the first time!). Out of it (and the time if provided) came photos; chicken and wild rice soup; and chocolate chip muffin bread.

Mostly what came of it was total relaxation. There wasn’t much I could do outside. And although there was much I could have done inside, the snow gave me permission to ignore it. 

I read in the morning, watched television while eating lunch, and as the soup simmered and the bread baked, I sat in the darkening living room looking at the white world outside. 

Pilot Light

Pilot Light

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Yesterday would be the best day of the week, the weather folks said. Work and freezing rain had kept me inside the last day two days, so I wasn’t taking any chances. Into the outside I went, all parka-ed and gloved. 

The wind that has been picking up steam for the last 12 hours was only getting started then, so I could make my way along the usual loop, up and down the neighborhood’s main street.  Still, it felt colder than it should have felt.

We’ve come to that point in the winter when my blood feels thinned out by shivering. So much of it is a mental game. Not the cold itself — I know there are actual numbers involved there — but how I approach it. 

Looseness is key, not tensing the muscles, not resisting the chill as much as moving through it like the human stove that I, that all of us, can be. But sometimes, yesterday for example, it feels as if my pilot light has gone out. 

Stop Time

Stop Time

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The rain fell and froze last night, and now the bamboo is bowing under the weight of it. Poor bamboo! It’s a nuisance in so many ways, but it forms a lovely screen for the deck, so I hope the day warms fast enough to free the gangly plant before it snaps.

Ice storms lack the beauty of snowfalls. They hold within themselves the hard edges of winter and none of its softness. 

Still, there is beauty in the glinting and there is wonder in the way droplets are trapped in poses they had hours ago. Ice stops time in its tracks.