Welcome, Spring?

Locally, Spring begins at 10:06 pm today. I’m pretending that doesn’t really count because it’s such a small percentage of the day so late in the day. Tomorrow is my first real day of spring, but not the first real spring day. That was some weeks ago. Got it?

Here’s the Weather Underground forecast for the beginning of Spring(?)!

10 day weather forecast

Snow on Thursday, Friday, maybe Saturday, 9.6 inches on Sunday, another 6 on Monday and 2.4 Tuesday. If ever I’ve hoped a forecast was wrong..! Just this morning the Better Half pointed out the green leaves emerging in the front garden and yard. I can easily envision them shaking off a three or four inch spring snowfall, but something approaching a foot and a half isn’t going to melt overnight or in a day or two. We are looking at (but not forward to) validation of a Minnesotan assessment of our almost snowless winter: “We’ll pay for this!”

I started the tractor yesterday, just to be sure the back blade is available. Tomorrow we’ll check on the snow blower and the diesel and gas supply. Maybe if enough of us show we’re prepared, Mother Nature will decide it’s not worth the trouble to harass us.

I don’t know about you, but each day I wish more and more the world would start making sense again. Then, again, maybe it rarely has:

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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