musings on a March morning

To this girl, born and raised in the Midwest, it didn't seem like much of a winter at all, but I guess it's over. This was absolutely the first winter I can ever remember that I didn't have to shovel any snow. All the way back to when we used to try - without much success - to shovel snow off the top of the gravel driveway on West 6th Street. Not that I'm complaining, you understand. I don't love snow the way I did when I was younger. Kind of like Lucie, who hasn't springbokked through the snow in several years now, I would prefer not to.

So is it spring, then? Well, not yet, and I don't want to make the same mistake I made last year - my first spring in Maryland. When the temperature rose above 60° last February, I started wondering why there was nothing blooming anywhere in my neighborhood. Didn't people around here plant spring flowers? What was wrong with them? Did they hate spring? And, further, why weren't there any spring flowers poking up through the soil in my own yard? I now know the answer to that question - nothing was planted here. Nothing beyond the ugly, overgrown, foundation plants in front of the house, and a strange, mixed-color crepe myrtle growing too close to the driveway, anyway.

That will not be the case this year, however, thanks to the dozens of bulbs that Ben and Julie and I (but mostly Ben) planted last fall. Already two yellow crocuses have bloomed, and daffodils and tulips are coming, as well. These harbingers of spring are mighty welcome here, and we check their progress daily. We also check the progress of the small trees and shrubs we had planted at great expense last year. I really hope they have successfully over-wintered. There is almost nothing more depressing than a forlorn dead tree in the spring when everything else is blooming and growing.

But, in keeping with the stated purpose of this blog, we will assume that everything is doing just fine, and will come along when it is supposed to. I just have to learn when that is, exactly.