Say It Ain't So!

The winter is about over. It's mud season now, and the scenery is somewhat less than pleasing, but that's okay. Even though the ground is still mostly brown and the dead grass is yellow, the trees gray and leafless, things are starting to get that windswept, waking-up look about them. There are pools of icy water just off the sides of the road and the trees that stand in it look somehow like they just sprouted there, moments ago.
Plaintive bird calls echo through backyards. Today I saw a blazing red cardinal and heard him trumpeting his spring call; "Toooo-weeet! chew,chew,chew!"
The little black-capped Chickadee was singing; "See-mee, See-mee!"
Two turkey vultures found a thermal above our street and circled each other in an aerial ballet, gradually drifting upward toward the sun.
Snow drop and crocus stems are starting to poke up everywhere, through the cold, crusty mud. The sky this past week was a nearly forgotten shade of blue. The only remaining mounds of gray snow are hiding in the shaded areas that the sun never reaches. The rest has melted and evaporated away. Today, although the wind was high and brisk, the ground radiated warmth. Winter is over for all intents and purposes, so why...why...WHY are they saying we are going to get a foot of snow over the next two days....WHY!? I know why. It's because this is New England; land of the meteorological practical joke. Wake me when it's over please...

Sun and Snow

For a few hours this morning, it was like a different world here in our neighborhood.
We live on one of two main roads in our town. If you drive from one end of our street to the other it will take you straight through, from the adjoining town to our east, straight into the one that borders us on the west. Running parallel on the north side is another main road which is a heavily traveled state route eventually leading into Boston. These two main roads are separated by a matrix of short, quiet little streets with almost no traffic where Rigby and I like to walk. Most of the houses are fairly close together here. There are little Cape style homes with screen-in porch additions and shoebox ranches interspersed with stately Colonials and gently decomposing Victorians.

My husband and I rent the second floor of a very old house, built in the early 1800s. There are many other two or three family homes scattered around the area as well. We have been here for almost thirty years and we raised our two children here. It is the next best thing to owning our own home, as it has an acre of lush backyard of which we have full use. It also has a barn that my husband uses for his workshop and maintains along with the rest of the property. It's surrounded by a narrow margin of woods.

Around us in this part of town are hills and flat stretches, and in places you can walk along the Charles river, or one of its tributaries for a spell.
Yesterday we got two rounds of snow. Together, I would estimate they totaled around 14 or 15 inches of light, sugar powder.

This morning Rigby and I ventured out into a sparkling, impossibly white world. The air smelled fresh and wonderful, blue jays were calling and the sun made diamonds appear on front lawns. We made our way across the neighborhood, drinking it all in. Suddenly, a great clot of snow fell from near the top of a huge hemlock tree and a thick, white curtain of snow plummeted to the ground a few feet away from us. It hit the ground with a muffled thud and billowed out like a little mock avalanche to envelope us for a moment in a cold and glittering fog.
Surprise and delight are found in the simplest of things.