Pages

2.28.2009

Hey clouds! Coming or going?

Last day of February. Zoom! Here it is, and it's been a wild weather ride; a wild emotional ride; a hopeful (if unfulfilled) work ride. We have successfully inched the last four weeks closer to spring, and the promise of new things! Can you feel it?

The grip of cold, grey-blue winter is loosening - Old Man Winter simply does not want to let go. As tenacious as he is, his grip is weakening and the back-n-forth tussle with Miss Spring is beginning to wear him down. The wild swings from extreme cold to unseasonably mellower temps is having it's effect on the poor old curmudgeon. Soon the lows will be a steady upper thirty degree to low forty degree fluctuation, and spring showers will replace the repugnant, dreary snow squalls and stinging icey flecks. Winter will limp out of here and quickly be replaced by the chittering, excited birds and eager early spring sprouts.

Oh those early flowers! I love to see them poking their beautifully new-green, curious selves upward from the icey chamber they've been slumbering in all through winter (all through last summer, too, if you stop to think about it).

The thawing ground gives just enough leeway for the regenerated bulbs to push to the surface with those delicate, pointy tips on slender submerged stems. After weeks of watching and waiting, it always seems as though I must have missed one day, because - POW! There they are. One after another. Dozens of little green solders appearing in the black earth of the flowerbed.

And sure enough, you start to see all of the vining plants showing signs of getting on with another year of color and delightful views. Not to mention the perennials greening up and preparing for a show of their own!

Yes, yes, I have plans this year. The gardens and I are going to get re-acquainted after my absence last year. I have plans, alright, and it is going to be beautiful!

Grey-blue winter is moving over for green-blue spring. S'long, Old Man Winter - see you in, oh.....say, nine to ten months.

No comments: