Twists of Fate

Cathy, in the comments to the last post, intimated that she’d like to smack me around a little, going all YAY over Spring being here.

Er, hrm. Slapping = bad! Eeek!

It’s not actually warm enough to garden out here yet. I shifted my start date of the seasons back six weeks because it never, ever felt right to celebrate the beginning of of a season when it had already been here for weeks and weeks already. For me, February 1st is still cold, still grey, but there’s HOPE that things will begin warming, and it’s a much easier, more gradual shift into the actual season. It just feels better to me, and my attitude adjusts accordingly.

I do think it’s easier to do that here in the fairly temperate maritime zone than it is back there in Colorado. I remember the wet snows of Feb/March (and occasionally the one in May or early June), but here? The trees look like they’re beginning to bud. It never fails to amaze me how one day not too long from now I’ll look up and all the trees will have tender new leaves on them, and it will have happened w/out my notice.

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t long, LONG weeks ahead with cold rain, and the ever present grey skies of the Seattle area. That, in may ways, is much more brutal to me than the freezing temps of my hometown right there on/in the foothills of the Front Range. There are may times when I look back on those 300+ days of sunshine and want to just cry and cry, because the sun goes missing for what feels like months at a time here. And even if it is sunny outside, if I’m at work on campus, I’m likely buried in a meeting room and won’t actually see it before I have to leave for home. In the dark. And the rain. Where it takes me over an hour to drive 12 miles because of traffic.

I think there’s always some kind of trade off for the beauty of where we live. The fairly mild climate is awesome, but the lack of sun is awful, and sometimes, that lush growth is actually kind of overwhelming. The snow and cold where Cathy is can be hard to take after months of it, but the beauty of the land and the mountains, and that amazing sense of wide open space is something that will stay with me forever.

So, Cathy, send me some sun and I’ll send you some greenery. Deal?