snowy longings, or, Be Careful What you Wish For

I spend half the year performing mental snow-dances, hoping and waiting for days-long whiteouts leaving the world piled in a soft white blanket. Then I can venture forth into the woods and hills, sliding jumping and dancing through the bounty. And this year my hoping and dancing has been rewarded, and then some. As of this writing, with a foot on the way tonight, another 20" (not including that foot) will tie the all-time Concord snowfall record. This goes a ways towards making up for all those terrible near-snowless winters. I haven't seen a scrap of my yard (wistfully- my beautiful, sun-dappled emerald green yard.... , but none of that now.) since December. I can't remember a winter like that in a long time.

The problem is, my genius dog finally figured out (after a few months like this) that the snow is actually in some places up to the level of the fence surrounding the yard. I suppose something on the other side caught her attention and so she went for a walk out. We recovered her one street away, after wandering into the street, unharmed. I've since fenced off the section behind the shed and snowblowed down one particularly high section, but with this upcoming snowfall there's not much I can do. Since I don't plan on snowblowing the entire circumference of the yard into a giant snow pile in the middle (though I could make quite the snowman that way!), the dog may be on a leash until the snow melts.

Ahh, winter in New England. We are so lucky this winter. The plants are all well-insulated. Should be a good spring. And with that statement I reveal that, despite my love of the snow and desire for more, there is a portion of me which, with the lengthening days, starts to, unbidden, daydream of sunlight, green growing things and springtime! First we'll take a few more snowstorms, the sap running, a whole lot of runoff, flooding and mud and THEN we'll be ready to plant and grow. (and we'll have our own little baby to grow around that time.