Spring Snow Stops Efforts



Saturday, April 16 snow blanket

 Saturday AM we awoke to a blanket of white,   coated overnight, but by afternoon it melted.  Just a few days ago I was out clipping the roses and working in the rose garden,  removing the wintry mulch and watching the robins scurry to take the choicest earthworms inches from my rake.  Well, it was OK, I could take a few days off  from my  spring gardening and confine my activities to indoor domestic chores which abound.   This photo is the back deck into the backyard where the bird feeders hang.  The goldfinch feeder is usually covered with the golden guys and girls, but the snow confused them and they retreated shivering  to the shrubs until later in the day when the sun melted the white to the lush green  hidden below.  I remember a few years ago having a few snowflakes in April but though it was something strange to me it was not to the natives who expect some snow surprise in March or early April.    

Our HHR Grey Goose Saturday AM

Our Chevy HHR, aka, Grey Goose,  is the car we tow behind our motor home and what we drive around most of the late spring through fall but which resides in the motor home house all winter.  After we returned from Arizona and parts south Jerry left the Goose in the driveway and we began to use her; she is the most economical with the rising gas prices.   Although the Goose was unprepared for Saturday's surprise, she accepted it as a minor washing and was her sparkling self by afternoon.  Even our  Excursion Coach whose nose is seen here in the adjacent  side drive way, braved the white  event as a new experience  unlikely to be repeated.    



April 19 2:00PM Out our front window



This morning, April 19, the white stuff began to fall as I departed for my book club meeting, Jerry's words, "take the HHR, it won't stick and will be gone soon."  Famous last words.  90 minutes later the white was coming down like a wintry blizzard and there sat the Grey Goose totally covered in the parking lot after book club.  Well the  windshield  wipers did their job, but I had to scoot the wet white stuff from the side windows and there I was without gloves or a snow scraper!   The snow was still coming down so, blowing lofty white fluff sideways but it was not unpleasantly cold and the flakes were huge, prisms to the eyes and eyelashes, so I went on to the post office and then returned home.  All the while I'm thinking this surely will cease soon and the sun will come out, shades of Annie. 

Oh that's "The sun'll come out Tomorrow, Bet your bottom dollar  that tomorrow There'll be sun!  Just thinkin' about  Tomorrow  it's only a day away."    Meantime today I have committed to help Sue  box up books from the garage the Friends of the Library are losing as book sale site with the sale of the elderly partroness' home.  Well, she said 2:00PM and surely it will stop by then. 

Hah you can see from the photo taken from our front window, looking out onto what was a cleared rose garden (on Wednesday) that at 2:00 today the snow continued weaving a white sparkle all around the air and ground.  But uptown the Goose took me, only Sue had decided phooey too.  We will try again tomorrow when this spring nuisance subsides. 

We gained a white cover of  about 3 to 4 inches  all over the town on all our lawns, which discourages the robins who cannot retrieve the worms that retreat into the earth below the remains of the mulch, down into the warmth.  Our streets and roads are clear as the "nuisance snow" lives up to its name. To me, April should not have snow, but here we are in Minnesota where after all my friends who make the best of a bad situation say, "it could be worse it could be a tornado or a flood or a fire or an earthquake or some of the devastation that the rest of the country suffers.  Here along the Blufflands, it might be white for a day but glorious green is underneath." 

Spring, spring where fore art thou? 

Harumph,  Juliet, just wait it out!