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Here Comes the Sun
Mar. 6th, 2006 04:31 pmThe weather this afternoon has been glorious. Sunny, not too cold, a little breezy. After my Linguistics lecture, I spent a good 3/4 of an hour sitting out in the sunshine, reading, until the growing chill impelled me inside.
Some landscaping people had recently performed that strangely common ritual of decimating the garden in preparation for spring, so there were piles of branches everywhere. One of these, fortunately situated in the middle of the sunniest part of the lawn, consisted mostly of some sort of soft-scaled cedar-like evergreen, whose springy fringed boughs made a very comfortable perch for my reading, despite drawing a few odd looks from passers-by.
It's funny, although it started to get cold in early November, and progressed rapidly into really cold, I realised a few weeks ago that I'd spent the entire winter waiting for winter to start, only to realise that spring had come. It's not that I was expecting snow (I'm from North Carolina for Chrissake), though that's what Iowa's had me used to. I think it was because the grass never turned yellow, it just stayed green and lush all winter. Then in mid-February, I started seeing signs of early spring: snowdrops and other early bloomers poking up, pussy willows putting out buds, etc. It's quite comforting to see that although the winter comes earlier than at home, and is a bit different in character, the spring comes at exactly the same time, and with the same signs of its coming.
Of course, it was the day after this realisation hit me that we had a big snowstorm. Well, 'big' by NC standards--and also by Fife standards, apparently--in the American Midwest or Northeast it would've been considered piddling. That was last Friday. Now there are a few traces of snow left, but the air is warm and the sun is shining.
Some landscaping people had recently performed that strangely common ritual of decimating the garden in preparation for spring, so there were piles of branches everywhere. One of these, fortunately situated in the middle of the sunniest part of the lawn, consisted mostly of some sort of soft-scaled cedar-like evergreen, whose springy fringed boughs made a very comfortable perch for my reading, despite drawing a few odd looks from passers-by.
It's funny, although it started to get cold in early November, and progressed rapidly into really cold, I realised a few weeks ago that I'd spent the entire winter waiting for winter to start, only to realise that spring had come. It's not that I was expecting snow (I'm from North Carolina for Chrissake), though that's what Iowa's had me used to. I think it was because the grass never turned yellow, it just stayed green and lush all winter. Then in mid-February, I started seeing signs of early spring: snowdrops and other early bloomers poking up, pussy willows putting out buds, etc. It's quite comforting to see that although the winter comes earlier than at home, and is a bit different in character, the spring comes at exactly the same time, and with the same signs of its coming.
Of course, it was the day after this realisation hit me that we had a big snowstorm. Well, 'big' by NC standards--and also by Fife standards, apparently--in the American Midwest or Northeast it would've been considered piddling. That was last Friday. Now there are a few traces of snow left, but the air is warm and the sun is shining.
