Snow
Snows have a personality. We remember them as we
remember people. Sometimes it is a fine, soft coating of vanilla,
enjoyed from our picture window with a favorite beverage keeping us
company. Comforting. A good friend. Some are heavy, wind-whipped and
bitter. An acquaintance from whom we can't wait to move on.
Remember the excitement of being a student, desperately
hoping for a snow day? On the day of a test? Which you were not
prepared for? In that class you hated? So you could binge on snacks,
TV, DVDs and video games? And still not study for the test? The snow
from a beneficent deity.
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| Snowmaggedon, 2010-02-08, 19 inches here in Northern VA. The falling evergreen on the right didn't survive. |
Don't tell anyone: teachers pray for snow days more
than kids do! As a teacher living in the southern part of my county,
I've enjoyed days when schools were canceled due to heavy snow north
of us, while my region of the county, southeast of the Piedmont in
the coastal plain, only had rain. Time for my wife and I to hit the
malls!
For gardeners, snow has its beneficial side and its
no-good-branch-cracking horrible side. Cold, dry snows sift through
plants, land on the mulch and eventually melt gently, deeply into the
soil. Mother nature shivers, but smiles. However, warmer wet, heavy
snows may pile up on the leaves and branches, bending the lucky ones
to the ground without damage, snapping into compost the unlucky ones.
A vengeful deity, smiting all.
Late snows and cold slow the spring flowering, burying
crocuses, delaying daffodils, killing azalea buds. March snows are
worse than ones in January. At the first of the year, spring is last
year's photograph, and an uncertain hope. In March we've smelled that
spring and want the warm, sunny days. Here. Now.
I still look around the yard and identify damage from
storms over twenty years ago. Some snows have killed parts of plants.
Some have bent branches to the ground, where they took root and
extended the parent plant in a process known as “layering.” In at
least two cases, the parent has died and the plant lives on in that
layered section. I thank that snow now, but I didn't then. Judging
snows is like judging people. Some you hate, some are just
irritating, some you appreciate, and some you love. Sometimes it
takes years to decide.
Looking back on life, I made the same delayed judgments
about several events as I did about snow: being forced to learn
things I didn't want to, getting a job that was my third choice, and
breaking up with a girl friend. Yet, everything turned out fine.
Thinking I can predict the future is a strange illusion. That
realization has developed slowly, as snow falling gently, building
up, its depth hardly noticed.
