Come on people! Stop complaining. It’s March, you live in New England, it snows every day.
Did you think this was Phoenix? I’m sorry, please drive right on through. In mid-November weren’t you pining for a White Christmas?
I was thinking ahead – to the next season of complaints. Mud season in New Hampshire is a combination of boot-sucking-goo and frost heaves that rattle your teeth. There are several roads I commuted daily for the past 7 years that I will not miss for lack of a job.
Mother’s Day to Father’s Day heralds the arrival of the notorious Black Fly. If it’s wet, they will swarm with an intensity not unlike buzzards to a carcass. Which, is exactly what your tender winter skin resembles when it comes out on those first warm days.
Mysteriously, after mid-June those pests are replaced by house flies, horse flies and a myriad of other insects. Having battled the Stink Bugs all winter, I’m fine with those.
If you have dogs, cats or horses you also know the “Season of Shed”. I honestly did try to decorate my home around a soft, muted dog-hair orange. Then the beasts of other colors made the hair impossible to overlook. Shedding horses is an even larger event. The barnyard fills with soft, rolling tumble-weeds of hair in every color and your clothes need a shave when you get home.
With glorious rebirth, Summer rolls in. Snow banks are replaced with gardens in riots of color. The gray trees sport impossibly-new green leaves and the daylight stretches far into evening hours. By August, we’ll all be bitching again. It’s too hot, too humid to ride. The kids “need” to go back to school. I’m sick of mowing the lawn and the gardens have become Ho Hum.
We then think longingly of Fall. Ahh, a time of perfect warm days and crisp nights that invite you to dig out a well loved sweater. That one you would cheerfully burn today for a chance at t-shirt weather.
But for now, I’ll look for the beauty in our perfect New England winter while it lasts.
Therapeutic Misadventures 