Relative Something

Sometimes our spring storms involve rain, but it’s not strange when they come as all snow. Last night, we got the all snow variety.

Let’s review. Last weekend I was adding a bedding of manure around the base of some of our pine trees. It looked like this:

Just days later, a spectacularly defined winter snow storm spread out across the middle of our country and rode right over the top of us.

When I left work in the afternoon, there were hints of snowflake flurries, but nothing showing on the ground. Driving across the metro area, I arrived in the thick of falling flakes, but the roads remained snow-free. It was wet, and my windshield wipers struggled to smear aside the salty spray blowing up from the vehicles around me.

As I came up the driveway, I spotted Dezirea standing in the wet blowing snow, but the other three horses were wisely tucked under the overhang of the barn. Cyndie moved them all inside to their stalls when the snow began to accumulate.

We stoked the fireplace and dined on a gourmet spread of coconut chicken and rice with lentils, barley, and quoting Cyndie’s description, “a whole bunch of other stuff” that she whipped up with her typical professional flair. We watched a fascinating documentary film, “Finding Vivian Maier” that arrived in our mail from Netflix. We stayed cozy and warm while the definitive spring snow storm blustered its beautiful best outside.

This time of year, it is always a laugh to think back to whether a ground-hog saw its shadow, or how long winter would really last. Winter comes and goes in fits. It has been 70° (F) here already, and we’ve had days of greening grass and drying soil. We also have enough snow to look like it’s been here forever and the previous days were simply a dream.

I’ll venture out this morning in the darkness of the early hour, and traverse the miles that go from almost a foot of snow, across several counties to the day-job where it will still look like spring.

Thus is the nature of the narrow gradient of frozen precipitation on the north edge of a late winter/early spring storm in this part of the world.

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