restless

The wind has hassled the house all night. As I drifted up into that half wakeful state this morning, the bumps and whines and squeeks startled me again and again, jolting me fully awake. The wind, in a hurry toward the east, kept jostling the house as it rushed past. There is cloud overhead, the sun breaks through from time to time. A very light snow so that you might hardly notice, a snow of thin, sharp flakes, swirls around erratically. A bright ray of sunlight sweeps past the window, the light cooling into greys immediately, as the sun is obscured by clouds again. The clouds do not have any defined shape. They are high, vague, rolling past, pushed on by the urging wind. The temperature has dropped sharply.

Now unprotected by any snow, because most of the snow melted in the last few days, the tender tips of green pushing out of the ground are exposed and and vulnerable. Did the bulbs, enticed by the spell of warm weather, push their growth up too early? Will the inevitable last big storm of March catch them?

I think not. Many of the bulbs started their growth last fall, some of the tips of green showing then before our first snowfalls. Under the snow they have quietly waited for spring. The days are longer, the sun is warm, but the earth is slow to release itself from the grip of winter and relax into the heat of spring and summer. The bulbs do this every year.

Other things might not fare as well. Roses, for one, certainly cannot take the fickle changes from day to day of this season. Best to leave them covered as long as this crazy weather lasts. Uncover them slowly, later, when spring has really taken hold.
For the first time, now that most of the snow is gone, the shapes of the vegetable garden beds become visible. To me, they are rather pleasing in the regularity. I'm so impatient for it to get a bit warmer so that I can get out there. I want to dig in the soil, feel it and smell it, lose myself in it. I wouldn't be at all surprised to come across a lost coffee mug out there that I might have laid down sometime last summer or fall, just for a minute and forgot, while I pulled this weed or that, or tied up this leaning plant or that.

I was inside from my walk by 5:00 p.m., trying to forestall the "Misty-running-after-the-coons" problem, by getting indoors well before dusk. I talked on the phone for a while, did a little vacuuming, warmed up some stew for my supper, and voila. I opened the door to let the dogs out for a pee (with Misty on her leash) and pow! We've been hit with about 3-4" of snow!