The last of the snow… melting slowly with the finally warming temperatures… a day or two here and there, a teaser… then a few days in a row… then a fresh light coat. Just enough to piss you off. You have pined for a warm up. You are counting the days to the official launch of Spring. You have weathered the storms and bitter cold. Toward the end you force color on everything. You force it to the breaking point and fill the house with early bulbs that blossom brightly in defiance as if to say “it won’t be long now, be patient”…
And you TRY to be patient… it’s not MY virtue… but maybe YOURS. You carefully watch the forecast, as if to predict the timing of the bounty that Mother Nature will bring forth when she is ready to wake from her tumultuous slumber. You scroll old photos desperately trying to determine when the first tree actually buds and then erupts in flames of glory. You watch as the sea of white outside your window starts to morph into the patchwork quilt that tells of the next season approaching… and then it happens…
That expanse of frigid (Eww, dirty) snow suddenly takes a turn and, reveals what was laying beneath for months. The beaten down grass. The peeks of pressed patches of green that in short time will become towering tufts of mowable perfection. But it doesn’t stop there… as the blanket begins to dissipate there is something more hidden beneath that remnant of the tundra….
The CARNAGE. The carnage of having children and dogs. The green tinged array that you have longed for to yield hope and blooms looks nothing like the expanse that you imagined when wishing for this vital shift. Exposed, it is a disastrous display of forgotten treasures and, a mine field of canine bombs that suddenly appear untouched and unaffected by months of snow. Poo fossils that have survived the arctic blasts like wooly mammoth carcasses that survived the life ending ‘Snowpocolapse’, only now to be discovered eons later. The 48 golf balls half buried in the brown and green sponge. The lacrosse goal that was knocked over in a wind storm is suddenly revealed. 2 snowboards, a broken toboggan left for dead in the woods, a soccer ball from fall perched among far fallen sticks, And a patio cushion that never made it inside in time to be salvaged… now stuck in the bramble.
And as you peruse the wreckage that has been left behind, you find yourself inadvertently staring off into space and thinking… FUCK…This place is a friggin’ DISASTER! That hopeful onset of Spring is suddenly and heart wrenchingly replaced by annoyance. You KNOW the battle that lays ahead will be fraught with stomping feet, whining, eye rolling and the endless cleaning of dog shit and squishy mud off of sneakers. The yelling through the now (thankfully) open window… “if I have to clean it up, then it goes in the TRASH”… not to mention the (now) ongoing fear of the season of such exchanges. Which means that, unless you are an “Alaska-esque” kind of remote, your neighbors will hear you airing your dirty laundry, yelling at your kids (because you already asked nicely 45 times) thar this is the ‘LAST STRAW’… and you hope that Social Services isn’t called… or better yet… the Coppers.
Welcome to the onset of Spring my dears. May you fill your abode with joyful blooms to welcome the arrival of a long awaited Spring and ignore every SINGLE thing that remains in your yard for a few more weeks until we can officially run naked around the firepit and start popping the Rosé.
XO,
Pippa