Minnesota, mid-April.

The contrast between last Friday--balmy 70s, sweet breeze, baseball openers and wind-chime peals--and today, specifically right now, is starkly darkly depressing. It's 32 degrees Fahrenheit outside (that's ZERO degrees Centigrade--old school term for Celsius--which really puts things in perspective). It's beautiful--until I remember that it's April, nearly a month after the official beginning of spring, and at least six months since we began seeing snow at the beginning of last winter. That last little bit makes me want to cry.

 

But I know this snow will not last. April snows here are always wet, heavy, blow-hard-idly truculent, wanting to be taken seriously but never achieving a greater status than that of a temporary nuisance--sort of like the last throw from a weak and black-eyed fighter, the last insult hurled in a lost debate. Because, of course, these snows melt away quickly on the already-green grass, disappear in the softened black earth, their hardier and grainier sisters long disappeared from the months and months of sitting in drifts on the frozen ground. The thaw is already here. The daylight extends well into the early evening. The birds have returned. And though they stand still and silent now, snow blanketing their backs, this snow just reminds them, and us, that cold likes to hang on here, but even it can't last forever.

 

Thanks to Papa, who always takes such lovely pictures.