‘Nuff said!!!

The calendar, which touts the arrival of Spring nearly five weeks, is soooooooo wrong. Even the advent of the pretty pink moon tonight doesn’t conjure any pastel Spring images when people are still in warm weather gear and yesterday the snow was a’flyin’. It was a harsh wind as I set out on “foot errands” this morning, multi-tasking as I strode along Fort Street making three stops to get errands done. Brrrrrrrr. The wind was whipping around – leaves, food wrappers and miscellaneous and sundry debris dancing in the still salt-stained streets. Green grass is growing haphazardly in clumps, looking unkempt, and rock salt kept crunching under the soles of my shoes as I stepped briskly along. I huddled down further into my coat, pulled my wool scarf higher over my neck and cold kept filtering through the woven fibers in my wool hat. I walked along the cross-street and a chimney was huffing and puffing and belching out a thick black smoke, smelling like someone was using wet wood. It made me momentarily cough and it filled the air with an acrid smell and lingered in my clothing long after I passed. I am still so bummed because this rainy weather has made me miss many walks the past few weeks. When I last walked, tiny shoots of daffs and crocuses were just emerging above the still-frozen earth in many gardens I passed. I like watching the progress of these Spring flowers; it’s like watching time-lapse photography over the course of a few weeks. But I missed all that. The daffodils are already in bloom and probably today’s wind will whisk that bloom away before day’s end. The forsythia are just starting to bloom putting colorful yellow hues into still another gray and dismal-looking-and-feeling day. I got home and took the car for a spin to get gas and a car wash – I pulled into the driveway and it starting “slaining” to borrow a phrase from Sonny Eliot – quick downpour mixed with sleet. Someone has got this calendar thing all wrong.