Hot And Cold, Spring Snow

Andromeda japonica in spring snow.

March 28, 2012

    After a week of record breaking, summer like temperatures, it was a surprise to wake up to snow cover this morning. My first thought was "Flowers! Flowers in snow!" I leaped out of bed and ran out to my gardens, still wearing my bathrobe. Quickly, my feet froze in my open toed, house slippers. My robe trailed in the snow and mud. I hopped around like a cat in water, trying to keep my feet from sinking into the snow as I pranced from one lovely vignette to another. I was enraptured in the glory of those tender blooms in crowns of snow.

      My husband hollered from the safety of a window, "What the hell are you doing out there?" Inarguably, I looked like a lunatic escaped from an asylum. Ignoring him, I kept photographing until the wind whipped up. My robe was blown in the air flinging mud with it and frigid air around my legs. My feet were soaked. I picked a trail of windblown hair from my mouth. When all of the snow blew off the flowers, I called it quits. Then, I heard water running.    

     Having grown up in houses with ancient, unstable plumbing, the sound of running water provokes P.T.S.D. symptoms for me. My first thought is always a strong "Oh No! What's wrong now?" Hurrying toward the sound, I was relieved to see that the source was just my husband, stark naked in his outdoor shower. Yes, we did  have snow; yes, the wind was howling; and yes, I still had the camera in my hands. And I did photograph him in all of  his glory, though his crown was suds, not snow. You may insert the smiley face here, or whatever other image you conjured. But, the details will remain between us. 

Siberian squill with snow on its crown

Pink Andromeda japonica in snow

pulmonaria, or Lung wort bud in snow

A blue variety of pulmonaria in the snow. Pulmonaria is also called Lung wort. In days of yore, it was used medicinally to cure respiratory ailments, like pneumonia. My grandmother would have said of David in his shower, and me in my robe in the out of doors, "You'll catch your death out there!" She need not worry. Once I'm done I'll just brew up some Lung wort tea. 

If you would like to see more images of spring time in Maine, click here.

This post is an Editor's Pick on Open Salon (click here for more on OS) It is the sixteenth of my works to be so chosen. Thank you, OS!

FLYday - American Black Ducks in snow

American Black Ducks in snow, Phippsburg Maine January 2012

FLYday is an homage to what our feathered friends do best, fly.

Scenic Sunday

View South of Newbury Point, Phippsburg, Maine

Clematis In Snow

In case you thought I was kidding about flowers in my yard under snow, check this out! This clematis always blooms late into the fall. This year, it was still blooming and had nice fat buds visible in the photo on December ninth. In fact, it still does have nice fat buds, but now they are buried. You can see from the little brown dots on the petals that their tender flesh had frozen. If the sun came out again and it warmed up, I'm pretty sure that those buds would bloom. As it's blowing a steady fifteen miles per hour with horizontal snow from the Northeast as I write, I'm afraid there's not much threat of that. I'm not sure what the variety of clematis is. I probably picked it up from a nursery center clearance bin and got it cheap for lack of a tag. When a plant loses its pedigree, it no longer commands the same price. This clematis could be 'Prince Charles,' based on the color and petal shape. Do you suppose the Prince Charles would be offended to know that if he lost his tag he would be relegated to the orphaned plants bin? Would he continue to bloom under the snow, regal, frozen, abandoned? 

The Psycho Season

Spring, ‘The Psycho Season’ is upon us. I wish it would just make up its mind and stay sunny and warm. But, oh no, one day it’s fifty and I’m thinking about applying sunscreen to my face; then the next, it’s twenty-five and snowing. The day I took the photo of the crocuses in the snow, it had been in the low fifties. Those sunny, dear little flowers emerged opening their faces to skyward. They were so naïve. WHAM! The next day, we had a blizzard that dropped a foot of wet, heavy snow and buried them. I thought for sure that they would be crushed, probably done for - much like I was. How does a person plan a wardrobe when the weather does this every year? Not that I plan a wardrobe. It’s just that I do so admire women who have seasonal wardrobes. It sounds so grown up. In summer, they pack away winter clothes and vice versa. Me? I have to have all of my clothing available at all times. Had I put away my winter attire when that blizzard hit, I would have been flapping around yelling “The sky is falling!” in a tank top. A tank top? Now that’s wishful thinking! If I had been wearing a garment as absurd as that, my sagging upper arms would surely have knocked senseless any passerby. I’ve never had a healthy body image, but spring brings out the worst of my neurosis. As the trend toward warmer days becomes more consistent and I get busier in the garden, I start to shed layers of clothing. Down vests, fleeces, doubled-up socks come off. They aren’t far way, only shed along the way toward full blown summer. Like the skin of a snake that has rubbed its body past rocks and sticks, my clothing can be found in chairs, slung over the newel post, hung on door knobs from one end of the house to the other.
Three days ago, I went outside in full, cold spring weather regalia and started pulling weeds. There was a biting north west wind coming across the water, but the sun was high in the sky. Working up a sweat, I started to peel off layers of clothes. I tossed a fleece over the passenger’s side rear view mirror of my car. Later, having forgotten about the fleece, I decided to take a run to the post office. When I turned out of the driveway onto the main road and picked up speed, in my peripheral vision I caught a great black flapping movement that scared the be-Jesus out of me. For an instant, I thought there was an eagle on my car. But, that was wishful thinking. How can I hope to be less erratic if the planet isn’t? I swell and shrink just like the planet, too. Just how much I swell is obvious every time I bend over to pull weeds. I think I might pass out! Over the winter, I’ve gotten fat. One advantage to a climate where bulky clothing is required is the degree of denial it affords. In the fall, as the clothes pile on, it creeps up on me - evil little fat monsters sneaking up and jumping onto my body, clinging to me until spring. Then, when the sun comes out, they are revealed. As my activity increases, they fall off, but for a while, I have to live with them. Secretly, sometimes, I’m thankful when the weather turns foul along the way to summer. I can put clothes back on, cover up my monsters, and sit and write.

POWERLESS

On February 22, Sunday night at 12:40 am, the electricity went out. For days before, the weather forecast had been dire. "Armageddon," that's what they said it would be. "Lake effect snow from the North West pushing ahead of a cold front will converge with low pressure from seaward resulting in high precipitation amounts. Post pone all travel plans and ready your storm emergency packs. Prepare for damaging high winds and power outages." We had heard it all before a hundred times. Our local TV station has a weather man named Kevin Mannix, but we call him 'Kevin Panics.' The day had been sunny and clear, so how bad could it get? "Besides, it will be spring soon. If it snows, it won't last long," we told ourselves. We did nothing.
After we had gone to bed, I watched TV. I often have difficulty getting to sleep, so that's what I do to shut my brain off late at night, while my dear husband is snoring blissfully away beside me (I envy his ability to sleep, honestly I do). I watch shows such as 'Trauma - Life In The ER,' 'Mystery Medical Diagnosis' and Discovery- 'An Asteroid Coming to the Earth Near You.' You might think this would be the last thing a person should watch while trying to fall asleep. It sounds like pretty scary, gruesome, fear mongering stuff, which I suppose it is. But, for me, it has the opposite effect; it's mind numbing and puts me to sleep. No nightmares, either (at least, not from that). When I watch that stuff it desensitizes me. Part of my mind believes that if I see enough of it, it will never happen to me, nor anyone I love. While I was absorbed in the medical aftermath of a multiple car pile-up in Nashville, Tennessee, the power flickered on and off three times. Each time the satellite transmission had to reset itself. That meant that I had to start the show over again. So, I got to see the same people intubated, chest tubed, rushed to the OR, and fully coded, three times. Talk about mind numbing! I got up and turned on the lights to see what was going on out the window. It was a total white out, blinding snow pelting horizontally right into the windows. It was an amazing spectacle since it had been forty degrees and sunny that day. Thinking, "well this can't be good," I retrieved a five gallon bucket from our cellar. Then, setting it into the bathtub, I filled it with water. We have a well, so if we lose power, we don't have water. You can endure quite a while without heat, but believe me, when there is no way to flush a toilet, well, THAT will flush you right out of the house pretty quickly. Then, I went back to bed just as the power went out for keeps (my husband continued to snore). When we awoke, the power still hadn't come back on and it was still snowing. There was a foot of wet heavy snow. Trees were creaking and groaning under the weight. The utility lines from the house sagged down into the driveway. We had been hit with a classic Nor' Easter and so, we knew we would be in for a long haul.
We have storms like this every winter and every winter, we lose electricity. Sometimes it's only for a few hours; sometimes it lasts for days. At the very least, it flickers off and on. This requires that all things digital must be reset which is an annoyance. Sometimes this happens several times a day which steps it up from an annoyance to a full blown irritation. Each time the power quivers, it makes me nervous. Of course, everything that matters here is on a surge protector, but still, I fear for my computer and the TVs (think of the gore I'd miss if the TV quit! I'd never sleep again!). But, most of all, I fear days of no electricity. Each time one of these near miss shots whistles across the bow of our little ship called Home, I imagine the pile of dirty dishes in the sink ballooning out like a cartoon, mountains of laundry pulsing near the lifeless washer, and worst of all: the toilets. But, let's not go there.

To some, I'm sure the idea of no TV noise, no ringing phones (that's right: no phone), cozy fires and inventive meals seems like a charming and inviting idea. Believe, me, after about 4 hours the fun is all out of it. I like to read, too. But there's too much of a good thing.

We have a small generator, but it isn't good for much. It takes miles of extension cords to plug anything into it and if it is cold enough outside it is reluctant to start. We only use it to charge my camera battery and run the refrigerator, unless it's cold enough to put things outside. At ten degrees, it was plenty cold enough this time. I had filled laundry baskets (since I wasn't generating any clean laundry to put into them) with the refrigerator contents and set them on either side of the front steps. UPS made a delivery to us in the midst of the outage. Richard (we are on a first name basis with our UPS guy) left his cumbersome, brown truck and walked down our road to our house. While holding the package for me as I came to the front door, he glanced around. "Geez, I'm sorry for standing in the middle of your refrigerator," he apologized. Very funny. "Thanks for bringing the package, Richard. Look out for live wires on the ground when you walk back to the truck," I replied. After all, I wouldn't want to lose such a dedicated UPS guy.
People might ask, "Why don't you leave? Go some place with power, a hotel or something?" The simple answer is that we have two dogs. To take dogs somewhere other than home is just a different kind of struggle to my mind. But, that's the simple response, not the true answer. The real truth is that we don't want to abandon our house. We want to be here to struggle along with it, feel the cold corners of the rooms closing in, hear the ice on the roof, angst about trees that may fall onto it. Our home is a living thing. When it's without electricity it becomes a not quite dead, ailing being pleading for help. So, we can't abandon it to the elements. We want to be here with it, maybe in its final hours. We understand people in other parts of the country who we see on the news (oh, the news, how I miss the news when the power is out!) who stay on through hurricanes or forest fires after they've been advised to evacuate. We have empathy for the conviction they start out with, the sense of control that dissolves into chaos then terror.
Every year we tell ourselves that we'll never go through this again. We will have a proper (synonymous with expensive) generator installed, the kind that goes on automatically and runs everything as if nothing is amiss, invisible life support for the home in crisis.
Why haven't we done this long ago? It's not about money. Money is an excuse, not a reason. It's about our own mortality. We want to believe that we are hardy, invincible souls capable of weathering anything. We want bragging rights that we toughed it out, again, as if putting words to that makes it true. "Three days without electricity is no big deal to us Mainers," we tell people, while actually trying to convince ourselves. The words create an energy that resonates through us like the electricity in our house, intangible while running everything. To have a generator is akin to admitting that we are dependent and vulnerable to the vagaries of a being greater than ourselves. It feels like giving in to something, a weakly defensive posture. Deep in our brains, to ask for help is to expose ourselves to the idea that we need it, and thus, that help might not be forthcoming. Not everyone survives in those medical shows, regardless of the heroic efforts of the trauma team. When an asteroid collides with our earth, there will be no help coming.
Yet another cold night, we go to bed in the dark. The dogs sleep with us shoving their way into the warm spaces between us. Soon, soon the power has to come back on. Lights and order will be restored. We will be liberated! I can't go another day without e mail, I'm an addict and I admit it. "I'll have to take my laptop to someplace where there is electricity," is my thought as I drift off to sleep. In my dreams my laptop is wrapped in a red bandanna suspended on a stick over my shoulder like a hobo. This can't last for long. Spring, the greatest narcotic of all, is coming.