Winter's Still Here!

We have more snow coming tonight, and possibly more later this week. The temps are warmer, but it sure doesn't feel or look like spring! To some who are sick of winter this last hurrah of the season of cold, snow and frigid temps is just plain frustrating! But the warmth of spring the smell of the soil and the colors of those early flowers will come.

But now the season is the back and forth between winter and the mud and pot hole season. The pot holes in the road have grown in both size and number and the poor road commissions here up North are doing everything to keep up - but if you live here you know they're not. Some pot holes are canyons and you just have to drive like you're on some back road - slow and carefully.

But it isn't simply the holes that have our attention, it is the wet and the mud that seems to be everywhere. By the time this season is in full swing people are really beginning to compare which was worse, the snow and ice or the holes and the mud! And then with just a few warm days there are bits of green, and then the first bursts of color that break free from the those first attempts at spring.

I like winter, but those early spring colors are so special. I love those first touches that are truly signs of spring. It's when winter finally takes off the snowboots and puts on the garden shoes, and the wellies!

Leaves for Thought

Sitting in a lawn chair, leaning back and watching the sky is a wonderful place to be on a cool fall morning. I sat this morning taking in the cool air watching the contrails and the bees buzzing all over what is left of my garden. That wonderful patch of ground filled with flowers this summers has become brown with long gray stalks where birds play and the only color comes from the asters and mums...but that is enough.

The fall is a minimalist season, unlike the spring with its exploding exuberance it is more a quiet exit to a gentler time. Though winter is often filled with winds and void of color, it is also a time of quite withdrawal. Behind closed doors there are more quiet pass times for many in our part of the country so fall is that thoughtful time where I contemplate life and wrap myself in the colors and quiet that comes from kids back in school, and life returning to a settled way.

Fall is here and I actually am looking forward to the season, and that cold one that's coming after as well. I love the summer's flowers and feeling of being productive, but I am more a fall devotee. The raking up of the summer's memories, and the moving on to a new day.