"Not all those who wander are lost" J.R.R. Tolkien



Thursday, March 1, 2012

Snow Day

Tuesday morning found me studying trees.  A good portion of the trees here have just the slightest fuzz of green, just enough beginning buds to really spark the heart into believing that spring must certainly, after a dark and dismal winter, be right around the corner.  I have grape hyacinth in my front yard.  The sprightly heads of daffodils are dancing everywhere in Salem.  I am busy sketching and planning my garden.  And then I wake up this morning to this:

Poor old girl, she's practically shivering!

You have to understand something.  We don't get much snow in Salem.  My first Oregon snow occurred in January and it was fat, thick and very wet flakes that collapsed wearily on the green grass and disappeared immediately.  A week or two ago it happened again.  It was pouring rain at two this morning so the temperature clearly dropped sometime before dawn and this paltry amount is the most we've had in the almost year I've lived here.

This "accumulation" has led to an official, school closing, snow day.  

Yes, please.  Digest that statement, all of you who live anywhere else.  I lived five long, blizzardy, frigid years in the tundra of Minnesota and only twice was school ever cancelled.  Once, for a freak 24 hour storm that dumped more than two feet of snow and left five hundred college kids to cavort madly in its wake, celebrating the joy of being childish again.  The second was when the temperature dropped, with the wind chill factored in, to 80 below.  And yes, that was my scheduled moving day and doggone it, we wrapped long johns around our faces and moved!  It was warmer in my freezer.

The sun is shining here today, something of a rare and welcome sight.  The houses across the street have direct sunshine right now and their snow is already melted, at 9:30 am.  This adds to my bemusement regarding the snow day.  Shakespeare has been oddly calm this morning because there are no kids walking to school for him bark his "you're too close to my house, back off" routine.  Really, you couldn't even begin a snowball, let alone a snowman out there.

Well, that pretty much covers any big news for me.  I have to go scrape my car (I'll have to use a broom because I don't even own a scraper!) and run some errands.  Should be quiet out there!


This photo looks east so yes, that is the sun coming up!