Wednesday's Words for March 1, 2017

Who could have imagined days of seventy degree temperatures in February? Not me, that’s for sure. I’m 62 and I don’t think I recall ever hearing of seventy degree days in February. What I do recall is being a child of 7 who had a father who referred to the mid-winter month of February with a prefix that was a blasphemous expletive. What I do recall is that for most of my life—and maybe because of my father’s opinion of the month?—hating the month of February for the deep, bone-eating, joint-screaming sub-zero cold temperatures it usually brings.

I think February, ultra cold and foreboding as it traditionally has been, could be used as another example of the principle behind that old saying, “it’s always darkest before the dawn”.

But today is the first day of March. And in this household, March is celebrated as the last month of winter. That coldest season is marked on the Ashbury’s calendars as October to March, inclusive. That is, I believe, the only topic upon which in my thinking that is more glass half-empty than glass half-full. Each season is technically of equal duration on the calendar, according to all the dead scientists and government people who long ago decreed such things.

What I have experienced that led to this outlook, is that it can often be way too cold and even snowing in October, and we don’t get true warmth again until the first or second week of April. Any cold weather after April the first is spring—an unseasonably cold spring sometimes with rare spring snow storms, but spring nonetheless. The up side of using my stated belief in a six month long winter, is that just days after winter has officially arrived, it’s already half over.

This is the time of year that tries what little patience I have. For example, on this past Saturday, in the morning, the weather was chilly and wet with rain, with greenish brown grass everywhere. And by Saturday evening it was cold and snowing. All the snow in our entire area had melted days before, yet we awoke last Sunday morning with a dusting of white covering everything. My inner curmudgeon (which really isn’t so inner anymore) was screaming, enough, already! Get rid of the white kaka!

In the back of mind came the whispered words: patience, grasshopper.

Patience, indeed. I’ll let you know if I find any. In the meantime, my heart always yearns for spring, because it’s my favorite season. It’s the season of renewal and rebirth, a time when it is so easy to believe that anything is possible.

Now that I have flower bulbs planted in my front yard, I look forward to seeing those green shoots poking up. Last year, when several of my crocuses and daffodils and hyacinths were bravely emerging from their winter sleep, snow came yet again and covered them in an icy blanket. I honestly didn’t know if they would survive, or not, but they did.

I’m even more hopeful this year, because in our area the winter of 2016/2017 was a fairly mild one. Or I should say, is a fairly mild one, so far.

My hands will forever itch, each spring, to get into the good earth, working around my gardens and caring for my plants. This isn’t going to happen as it used to because of how very difficult it is for me to get down on the ground and get back up again. Fortunately, we have “window boxes” that we plant each year, and that we then hang on our front porch railing.

While I can get one of my grandchildren here for an afternoon to weed and tend my ground plants, I can get my own fingers into the top soil/peat moss blend we use for the planters. That’s not as personally satisfying as it was back in the day when I could be on my hands and knees in the dirt, ensuring the health of flowers and vegetables alike.

But the secret to happiness really is learning to improvise, adapt and overcome. Because it isn’t the body that needs to touch on these tributes to the past: it’s the soul.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury