Snow, melt, repeat,...!

Last week a bluebird was investigating the birdhouse in the back yard. We hope it was found satisfactory for nesting and look forward to seeing fledglings emerge later in spring or early summer.

This morning, in the midst of yet another spring snowstorm, we watched a tom turkey put on a mating display in the back yard.

April snow comes and goes

Photo by J. Harrington

As this is being written, this morning’s snow is slowly melting and adding to the groundwater and the atmospheric humidity.

We’ve just remembered a key piece of meteorology we first learned from Winnie-The-Pooh:

The More It Snows (Tiddely-pom) by A A Milne

The more it snows
Tiddely-pom
The more it goes
Tiddely-pom

The more it goes on snowing
Tiddely-pom

And nobody knows
Tiddely-pom
How cold my toes
Tiddely-pom

How cold my toes are growing
Tiddely-pom
Tiddely-pom
Tiddely-pom
Tiddely-pom

Some time ago, client scientists and folks of that ilk, the misguided ones who referred to climate weirding as global warming, correctly informed us that we should expect highly variable weather with extended periods of dry weather interspersed by extended periods of precipitation. That’s what we’ve been getting for the past year or so. Last year’s drought conditions in Minnesota have been reduced to several areas of abnormally dry and a few very limited areas of moderate drought. Last summer parts of the state were experiencing exceptional and extreme drought.

Slowly, very slowly, I’m trying to adjust to being cheated out of spring this year. We need the moisture. The cooler temperatures and replenished groundwater may help keep water temperatures more tolerable in local trout streams. I may even begin to ignore the lack of ideal conditions and go fishing anyhow (except for howling winds).

Since April is National Poetry Month, it seems appropriate to close today’s postings with an observation and poem from Robert Frost.

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”

A Hillside Thaw

by Robert Frost

To think to know the country and now know
The hillside on the day the sun lets go
Ten million silver lizards out of snow!
As often as I've seen it done before
I can't pretend to tell the way it's done.
It looks as if some magic of the sun
Lifted the rug that bred them on the floor
And the light breaking on them made them run.
But if I though to stop the wet stampede,
And caught one silver lizard by the tail,
And put my foot on one without avail,
And threw myself wet-elbowed and wet-kneed
In front of twenty others' wriggling speed,- 
In the confusion of them all aglitter,
And birds that joined in the excited fun
By doubling and redoubling song and twitter,
I have no doubt I'd end by holding none.

It takes the moon for this. The sun's a wizard
By all I tell; but so's the moon a witch.
From the high west she makes a gentle cast
And suddenly, without a jerk or twitch,
She has her speel on every single lizard.
I fancied when I looked at six o'clock
The swarm still ran and scuttled just as fast.
The moon was waiting for her chill effect.
I looked at nine: the swarm was turned to rock
In every lifelike posture of the swarm,
Transfixed on mountain slopes almost erect.
Across each other and side by side they lay.
The spell that so could hold them as they were
Was wrought through trees without a breath of storm
To make a leaf, if there had been one, stir.
One lizard at the end of every ray.

The thought of my attempting such a stray! 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.