Usually, at this point in the year, I can be found traipsing around the backyard, looking for signs of spring. (As of February 15, springtime is 33 days away!) However, this year, we’ve spent the month of February buried under snow.
I grew up in northwest Ohio, and as a kid, I remember winters being very snowy affairs. Snow days were a given. Level three snow emergencies (where everyone is to keep off the roads) took place annually. The neighborhood pond was turned into a skating rink, and sledding hills were so well-used that they’d turn into sheets of ice. (You basically needed crampons to ascend the hills at Fort Meigs by mid-winter). My brothers and I built large forts into the giant snow piles made from shoveling the driveway, complete with multiple rooms and stockpiles of snowballs.
There’s a veggie bed under here someplace
Eventually, I grew up (well, aged, at least), and moved south. I only made it two and a half hours south, to central Ohio, but the weather here is surprisingly different from my first home. It gets warmer way earlier in the year, and we definitely don’t have as much snowfall. It’s not weird to call home and hear from my parents that they are having a cold, rainy day in the 40s when it’s sunny and in the 70s here. It took some getting used to, and made my garden-loving heart happy, to have even a few more weeks of a growing season.
This year, though, the weather needs to, as my grandma says, “get with the program.” We’ve had snow on the ground every day so far this month, and there’s been quite a few stretches with daily snowfall. I go out to fill the bird feeders, and step down into snowdrifts that I didn’t expect to be quite so deep. Snow fill the tops of my boots, cascading down my socks onto undeserving ankles. It’s rather cold. I am made crabby.
Today, more snow is falling. By tomorrow morning when this latest storm wraps up, we’re expecting another 8″ or so of snow.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be hiding upstairs with my lemon tree, listening to ocean sounds on YouTube and looking at pictures from Hawaii.
Come on, springtime.
Lemon trees, good for Vitamin C and daydreaming