A Generation of Daffodils

Hard to believe 3 weeks ago we were still mid-blizzard. It has been 75 degrees for three days now; the snow is gone and we're working outside in tee shirts. The Daffodils are coming up everywhere including those in the woods that my father planted at least 50 years ago. I am surprised every year to see them. there wasn't even a house here when he planted them; just the same woods where they pop up each year. Some times there are branches down and I clear them away but other than that they are completed self-sustaining.You'd think it would be a tree that would remind me of him each year-but instead it is these fragile flowers that bring bright yellow to the woods when there is so little else colorful around. They always come up in March- the month he was born and died in. Thanks Dad and Happy Birthday.

Blizzard 2010

It came in February but it was a spring snow. About two feet of heavy wet snow that weighed down branches of trees, taking out power lines, and was beyond the capability of ordinary snow plows. The power was out for four days and we were snowbound for three. Many were out for longer.We lost limbs from the oak tree near the pool, a red maple near the garden and an enormous lower limb off one of the big sugar maples. Certainly winter hasn't finished. We kept the house warm with the woodstove and the sap boiling on the gas burners, melted snow for the toilets and tried to knit and read by candlelight at night. The talk all over town was how long you were out of power and whether you had a generator. The ones who didn't have a generator or a woodstove went to motels when they got plowed out. They slept with hats on and blankets piled high on the bed. It wasn't even that cold out- just below freezing at night and high 30's during the day.

I thought a lot about how everyone at one time lived this way and many still do. If it was your reality, you would change things- get everything done during sunlight, rise with the sun and sleep when it went down. You would live in a smaller house and sleep nearer the heat source. Since it was not our reality, everything was harder and we just waited for it to be over to return to our empowered lifestyle.