Saturday, April 02, 2005

Spring?

Yesterday I worked in my yard, digging and raking, discovering tender new shoots of perennials under the muddy brown oak leaves. Spring was finally making an appearance in my spirit as well as my garden.
Waking during the night I could hear the wind blowing a heavy rain hard against the window pane. Good, I thought, the grass seed I threw over the bare spots in the lawn could use the extra watering.
I walked over to the window at dawn and gasped.
Overnight the heavy rain became wet, heavy, snow that had been falling since the earliest hours of the morning. Once again it was winter in Cleveland.
The snow is still coming down this afternoon, about four inches on the old stump next to the garage.

In January I would have thought it beautiful.
In April, it is merely redundant.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh God, don't we all know it.

Mary Beth said...

Around here (the edges of New England), late snow is called "poor man's fertilizer" since it helps pull good things into the top soil. It's possible to put some fertilizer out late in winter while there's no snow cover and know that later snows will indeed pull it slowly into the ground without washing it away like a heavy rain would.

Or you can just consider it an april fool's joke from Mother Nature to gardeners!