Waiting, Waiting, & Waiting for Spring

Following the typical Iowa tradition of, “...wait five minutes and the weather will change” a reluctant, timid spring is being overshadowed by a stubborn winter, who is acting like the guest that won’t leave. These two seasons have been in a head-to-head battle with spring heavily favored, but winter ensuring it’s a fight to the finish. Today, for instance, instead of green shoots of grass and bulbs popping their heads from beneath brown patches of lawn, we are given more snow...yes, snow.

The folks around here just shake their heads and comment that we’ve had plenty of unusually warm winters and we were due for a bad one. OK, we had the bad stuff and hunted Easter eggs in the snow; can we have warm air and sunshine already?

This weather has me feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football just when Lucy pulls it away and he lands flat on his back...ARGHHHHHHH!

Inside one kitchen window, newly started Cosmos seedlings offer the only visible evidence of rejuvenation here. Given that indoor blooms are all I may see for a while, I went ahead and started some Zinnia seeds as well. Outside another kitchen window, birds of all types eagerly devour the birdseed I keep stocked for them. The only new flyers I’ve seen lately are young goldfinches who seem to be wondering, like me, what happened to spring.

Yesterday, despite having a miserable head cold, I wandered outside to collect litter around our homestead leftover from the great snow melt. Most of the old snow has melted with just one leftover mass in the front along the driveway that is languishing. The basement in our garden shed out back has been regularly accumulating water, putting our new larger sump pump to good use. Although obsessing about the weather is futile, I still find myself checking various weather sources daily hoping to find a spring-friendly forecast. Tomorrow and the weekend are to be warmer and dry. Next week offers another chance for, you guessed it, snow.

Why is it the older I get, the more I believe birds are the wisest of all creatures? They fly south as the temperatures fall to avoid Iowa’s schizophrenic winter climate. Some day I’d like to be reincarnated as a bird able to wander where and when I please. I could make a temporary home wherever I fancy with a front row seat to the best flower shows in the country – all free. I would tease cats and sing aloud all I wanted even if I'm off key.