Loving the Spring Snow!
It’s snowing again this morning and I love it. I know, most everyone is really tired of the snow, but honestly, I think these last snows of winter are as magical as the first ones. We have the “all’s well with the world” huge flakes coming down – you know, the same type as you see in the movies when the drama of the story sorts itself out into the feel-good ending.
Not-quite-ready-for-shorts weather broke out yesterday coming ahead of the storm, so I chose a skirt to wear. I also pampered myself by heading to my favorite place to work outside in the sun in this town and just soaked it in. I think yesterday was really the first warm day we’ve had this year – one warm enough to really relax into it. More will come, though. This has been a cold winter this year. Mom and I were talking about the year Dad passed away – that winter I was up here quite a bit and don’t think I really ever needed much more than a light jacket. Usually in the Cody area, you get a few really warm days during the winter, but we really didn’t get those this year. Just lots of cold – and more snow than people are used to. I still, though, revel in the fact that the winters are shorter here by a couple of months than where I used to live in Colorado.
It was those really long winters that got me looking more closely at phenology – the study of the seasons. When these types of spring storms came in the Colorado mountains, the calendar read mid-May to June. Already here, signs of spring are everywhere – from birds building their nests to the first “red dog” (a name used for bison calves) seen in Yellowstone. I also heard a report of the first grizzly bear sow and cub seen. I have an American Robin battling his reflection in one of the windows in my office, so need to spend a bit of time watching where the nest is being built this year.
And spring cleaning is underway. On these days when it’s just not quite nice enough to be outside for long, the energy we’d like to spend in the garden gets transferred to the inside of the house. My house plants have been re-potted and are ready to live where they are for the summer. Both Mom and I have dug into corners and deep cleaned quite a bit. I suppose that’s appropriate as once it’s warm the house will have to defer to our being outside. Anyway, a tidy house is easier to bear when you’re ready to be outside more.
Mom had posted this Robert Frost poem on her Facebook page six years ago today, showing this is just how it is here in Wyoming (and apparently pretty much everywhere that enjoys the luxury of seasons):
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 comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
Robert Frost