At Least February is Short

One of my favorite things about February is that it’s a short month. 75% of the time, it’s 28 days, and since it falls in the middle of winter, the loss of the 29^th, 30^th, and 31^st means that spring will be upon us before we know it. Most of March is still winter, but the stores have put out their Easter merchandise by then. I finally get a sense that spring is just beyond our grasp.

Not that this winter is nearly as cold here as last, and it’s certainly not been as bad as elsewhere, but there is a heap of snow on the ground as I type this. I’m reminded that those sunny days in the 50s, quite unusual for winters in the Pacific Northwest, aren’t coming back right away. Even the bulbs had begun to believe it was time to come up, and how sad to see their young greenness barely poking above the heavy, wet snow. In most cases, they’re completely buried.

Nature provided a white Christmas, which is always magical, but I don’t want anything to linger if it’s going to keep me trapped inside. I’ve been lucky compared to the weeks of accumulation last year. At least I’ve been able to get to the movie theater a few times, have the chance to eat someone’s cooking besides my own, and get a few glimpses of the area peaks covered in snow. That’s all gone for the time being.

I now regret not taking advantage of the warmer sunny days when I could have been working outside to clear more land or haul broken branches from the earlier windstorms. These ongoing projects are especially time consuming in the spring, and I’ll kick myself in March and April for not having gotten a head start. However, I told myself that the bug I caught right after New Year’s had not completely gone away. There is still a lingering cough when I say (or type) the word “cough.” I didn’t want to get overheated and have a relapse and, oh, aren’t those more dark clouds heading this way?

At least the snow covers the messes I haven’t cleaned up, and that allows me some time to pretend they don’t exist.

© 2018 by Patrick Brown

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