I’ve been musing this rainy, thunderous morning on how our winters here are like having an aneurysm. I don’t know why it popped in my brain, but things do. It’s a wonder my brain works at all so I don’t mind.
Here, in the South, we can count on Spring being full of pollen so thick you can write your name on the cars. The trees send out leaf buds and soon become full. Gardens are planted and tended to with vegetables and flowers blooming. Come Summer, we can count on high humidity and heat. Work in the yard increases, families will grill out more often and take advantage of parks and rivers, the Appalachian trail will be full of hikers. Come fall, there’s wonderful colors from all the deciduous trees and the conifers make a nice background to the reds and yellows. Roads in the mountains will be jammed pack with visitors to see the colors. The oaks start losing their leaves but those dang things keep falling and seem never to stop, seriously. We still have oaks that won’t shed all their leaves.
But Winter, we never know what to expect, it seems. Might get snow, mostly we get ice, might get warm weather. We got down to 6 degrees Fahrenheit right before Christmas and we are expecting this week to be in the 60’s! The oaks still have leaves on them!
With aneurysms, they are like Winter, we never know what to expect, we have to be ready for anything, a beautiful cold, crisp day, rain and thunder, maybe a bit of ice or snow, or power outage…I think I’ll plant some more pansies. What are you going to do?