perspective | weather

I’ve been spending this gray, rainy morning reading other gardeners’ blogs. A lot of these are written from the UK and Europe, which right now seem to be having a cold snap and at any rate are much, much colder than here. So I’m reading about frost, and blackened leaves, and I look out my window at the overcast sky and the occasional drift of light filtering through the clouds, and contemplate whether it is or is not too mildly damp and drizzly to walk a lazy half block up the road to mail a letter to my friend L. (Digression: one upside of the pandemic is that L, a high school friend with whom I used to exchange letters during summer vacations, & I started writing real physical letters to each other again.) While I read, I consider how much I admire and enjoy snow, and admire and enjoy the crisp frost of a colder-than-here winter morning, and at the same time I love sun and find it hard to imagine what would actually be too much time out of doors. Years ago, during the six months I spent in York during my junior year of college, it started out as winter and there was very definitely snow. I went hiking in the snow with a student group on weekends, and I walked the two miles kilometers from my residence hall to class during the week, regardless of weather. I am not sure if this was because I didn’t want to spend money on the bus, or was puzzled by the bus schedule, or maybe there wasn’t a bus, or maybe I simply preferred to walk. I remember kicking my boots through the cold white drifts and stamping down the half-melted-and-refrozen crunch underfoot. I remember the fascination of the bleak gray sky. I suspect I was often cold, but I don’t remember wanting to change anything (this was when I was much younger, before I learned how to buy a winter coat, and that “made of wool” is not the same thing as “warm”).

Anyway. Weather. I am so grateful that yesterday was warm and sunny and I spent the afternoon digging in the dirt, and then I had a giant glass of fresh-squeezed navel-orange-and-Persian-lemon juice afterwards.

And I’m only a little bit jealous both of those with snow, and those growing tropical blooms in Florida and soaking up sun in the southern hemisphere!