Our Gurney’s spring seed catalog arrived a couple of weeks ago.
At first I was okay.
I mean, there’s always a little thrill when it arrives in the mailbox between our Entertainment Weekly Oscars edition and the cable bill. But even after I sat down and looked through its brightly-lit photos of golfball-sized strawberries and deep emerald green bush beans, I felt all right.
After a brief tease of 50 degree weather last week, the temperature bottomed out again. This weekend we were stuck inside – again – and yesterday, as the thermometer reading hovered around 15 degrees, I slowly became obsessed. Again.
I’m not compulsively hoarding seed envelopes yet. But my brain seems to be stuck in this loop of what I want to plant in our garden, how much of our tax return we can set aside to buy this biggest tree possible to replace the crumbling box elder that provides the only shade for our backyard (aka our outdoor playroom/dining room), and finally where the heck else can I plant hostas when I split them this year?
This sickness strikes every year around this time. Maybe it’s the arrival of those pastel-colored Easter dresses in all the stores, or maybe Cadbury cream eggs are my trigger. But more probably it’s because of an inborn need I have to be in the sun, coupled with my childhood in Oklahoma where spring beauty is God’s gift to the good folks who live through just about every kind of bad weather that exists on the planet.
Also, I want to dress Diva (and maybe Hunk if I’m feeling silly) like this:
My sister and I before Easter Mass. I don’t know what I’m doing. I look too holier-than-thou to actually be praying.
Springtime in Oklahoma is amazing – nothing smells better than a flowering tree right before a hailstorm. It’s like those little dogwood trees know they could be killed at any moment by hail or high winds, so they give their best efforts to be remembered as something gorgeous.
My first year living away from home at SUNY Oswego, I was more than a little obsessed with spring. I was taking a poetry class and every single thing I wrote was about thunderstorms and being cold. In retrospect I know I was experiencing some really debilitating homesickness, but at the time I was utterly horror-stricken that I wanted to hug a tornado. I still get that way pretty much every March, though it has been years since I lived through one of those days of terror and awe when you are glued to the TV screen because there’s a possibility your life is in danger and you have to be ready to run for it. So, yeah, I probably don’t accurately remember what that’s like.
On a more practical level, this last heavy shroud of winter makes me feel like some creature that thrives on sunlight but has been forced to live in a cave. I guess I’d never survive the sci-fi scenario where all humankind has to escape some natural or manmade disaster and live underground.
When I do finally emerge, translucent-skinned and blinking into those first teasing days of sunlight AND warmth (since winter sunlight is most often accompanied by frigid temperatures here), I can’t quite appreciate it. Because these last few weeks of winter make me angry. I feel like spring isn’t quite good enough to make up for the months of snow and wind and more snow we go through here. March, April and May feel cruel. Once, it snowed on Mother’s Day and I wanted to kick a tree. That’s how much I hated Mother Nature on that day.
But, amazingly – MOST years – Memorial Day to Labor Day DO make up for it. The things I can grow in my little backyard garden are like a miracle. How can a squash go from seed to the size of the lower part of my arm in 3 months? It seems impossible, but it happens every single year.
Left – Me helping my mom plant her early spring garden in Oklahoma when I was probably around 18 months old.
Right – Diva helping me plant our garden here in NNY in May 2008. She looks slightly less enthusiastic, yes? She’s decidedly NOT sick with congenital spring fever. Diva will reincarnate as a snow angel, as seen here:
If this is your first winter here, I’m sorry.
I know it’s not my fault, but this blog is about the good parts of living in northern New York.
So, I can’t help it. I AM sorry. Spring in NNY is not my fave and it will be tough for me to find nice things to say about it. Winter can be awesome if the weather is decent enough for you to get out and play in the snow. Fall here is amazing, full of vivid colors and fragrances. Summer is like a different world and you will become utterly overwhelmed with the sheer number of wonderful things to do.
But spring is often wet and ugly. The leftover snow is brown. The dog turds in your backyard will resurface. Your car might pop a tire during pothole season. The wind blows and sometimes the rain turns to snow. In short, it’s pretty much an extension of the worst parts of winter.
So I will focus on other things. Like bright little packages of seeds that I will plant and nurture and watch grow in a few weeks’ time.
