I am tired of winter. And coming from me, that’s quite the statement. I mean, I love snow. I like the way it looks, I don’t mind driving in it, and I love to shovel it. So perhaps what I really mean to say is, “I am tired of this particular winter!” I’m tired of the snow, the cold, and the fact that my car window is frozen, and it won’t roll down, which makes getting in and out of the parking garage rather difficult. I’m tired of it taking 10 minutes to get into the several layers I need to survive outside. I’m tired of the ice on my car windows and the ice under my feet that makes walking dangerous. I don’t care how sparkly the icicles look with the sun hitting them, or the beautiful bluish shadows on the snow in the morning. I just want spring to come.
And my poor plants, inside and out. The hellebores look like someone poured boiling water on them, they are that blackened. My beautiful roses, who knows what they are doing under the layer of leaves and snow? I can only hope they are faring better and look nicer than the climbing rose, which was left to its own devises over the winter. It’s leaves are dry, black, and sad. Strangely enough, the plants that seem to be the least affected (other than the weeds!) are the native plants in my garden. And the poor ferns in the house – it appears that no amount of misting will combat the dry air from the constant running of the furnace.
I will leave you with this…somewhere, buried under all of that snow and ice, there are spring flowers waiting for that day when it’s warm enough, and sunny enough, for them to come out.
And, of course, all the beautiful flowering trees that we planted this fall in the Arboretum.
For some reason, William Wordsworth’s poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” is coming to mind:
Lower Olentangy Urban Arboretum 