Would a white surrender flag be seen?

It's about this time most years that we decide Minnesota Winters are some four to six weeks too long. We just cleared the drive for the second time in as many days and the snow is still coming down. Actually, if you had suggested we might be able to overheat ourselves blowing snow, we wouldn't have believed you and we'd have been wrong.

one week from today, we celebrate!

Photo by J. Harrington

One week from today is Valentine's Day. Two weeks from today is International Mother Language Day. Three weeks from today, the month of February ends for this year and with that meteorological Winter ends, also for this year. There will be more snow and some more cold but the lengthening days and the strengthening sun will have us looking for melting snowdrifts, emerging lichens and skunk cabbage. We hope you now feel better. We know we do. We were surprised to see that the frost depth under bare soil is only about 15". We thought it might be as bad as last Winter but it's closer to Winter of 2016-2017.

British soldier lichen, a preview of coming attractions

Photo by J. Harrington

The dogs are somewhere between confused and distressed by the growing snow depth everywhere except the driveway and the roadway. The yard and the ditches are too snow covered to comfortably squat or raise a leg and they give us looks like it's our job to fix it. Today we had to take a chisel to clear the slot at the front of the mail box so the door can swing down and the mail carrier can leave the mail. This was not an issue when the road was gravel and the township plowed it with a grader. The grader moved more slowly and didn't throw a five or six foot (or more) wave of plowed snow into the far sides of the ditches. We're still waiting to see which part of getting the road paved turns out to be real progress for those who live along it.

Winter

By Billy Collins

A little heat in the iron radiator,

the dog breathing at the foot of the bed,

and the windows shut tight,

encrusted with hexagons of frost.

I can barely hear the geese

complaining in the vast sky,

flying over the living and the dead,

schools and prisons, and the whitened fields.

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