Wednesday, April 05, 2006

The Struggle of the Seasons

It's a war out there.

Spring duly arrived to claim it's territory in early March only to find Winter stubbornly refusing to move aside.

This struggle is no way near over. Yes, spring has gained the high ground, the first rocks and the steepest slopes are now appearing through the snow, but it's a long hard battle. The snow which has been with us since mid November has now sunk and compacted down to around a little over half a meter depth but it is now dense and wet and the spring thaw has had little effect to the total volume of water to melt.

Just as spring begins to makes headway, for example, a light spring shower helping to wash away some snow, the temperatures fall and it starts snowing again. Just today, lovely spring sunshine managed to get the temperature up around 5-6 Deg C, but tonight, it would seem, the temperatures are on the way down past freezing again and it'll all be ice again in the morning.

This struggle has left it's mark on the landscape, once a beautiful pure white, now dirty grey. Through the constant melt and freeze, the gritting of roads, the passage through wet snow and so forth it is hard to tell the difference between snow, grass, gravel and tarmac.

It's been a wonderful winter and we have been very privileged to enjoy such conditions which haven't been seen for 40 years or more but now it really is time to start making progress with this years endeavors in the vegetable garden.

Come on winter, get out the way before it's summer.....

1 comment:

the other cold one said...

Yep. I'm beginning to wonder what colour grass is up here too. But I think this is a three week period or so, and because we have such a huge amount of snow, it will be here till mid may!!! Very poetically written, by the way.