snow not melting | Bertram's Blog

White Landscape

January 29, 2023 — Pat Bertram

I’d fallen back into the habit of blogging every day, so yesterday, when WordPress didn’t give me a prompt or suggestion of what to write about, I decided it was a sign to take a day off.

Habits are interesting — even good habits tend to take over your life. My life, anyway. I start out blogging every day, and soon the habit becomes a thing in itself that needs to be fed, and finally, the habit becomes a mandate. I begin to feel I must post something, and so a pleasant habit becomes a lot less pleasant. I don’t like feeling pushed, and so yesterday I pushed back.

Or it could be that yesterday I was just lazy. There’s a lot of that in my life right now. It’s hard to want to do anything when it’s so cold, and when every time I look out the window, I see the same thing — leftover snow. I can’t remember a year where the snow lingered so long. Colorado is known for its sunny winter days and quick melting snow, but this year? Not so much. It’s not even that we got a lot of snow. For the most part, the snow came from a mere two storms. Right after the first heavy snow had slowly melted, a second storm came and dumped six or more inches. And that snow is still out there.

I’m hoping that the constant moisture will help with spring flowers, but I fear it will also help bring out the weeds. But no — I don’t want to think that way. I simply want to dream of the pretty flowers that will brighten my life in a month or two.

Tulips, maybe.

Perhaps even crocuses.

Or wildflowers.

Anything but the white landscape I’ve been seeing for so many months.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, gardening, life. Tags: crocus, dreaming of flowers, leftover snow, snow not melting, tulips, wildflowers. 10 Comments »

Balmy Weather

December 21, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I walked to the library today in the balmy temperature of nineteen degrees. The “balmy” isn’t totally ironic because it will feel balmy in comparison to tomorrow’s expected temperature. I had to check the forecast twice because . . . 2 degrees? Really? With a wind chill of way below zero? And that’s the high! The low will be minus twelve with a wind chill I don’t even want to consider.

I can’t even remember the last time the high temperature was that low. Maybe when I was a kid?

Not that it matters — it’s what I have to deal with now that counts, not what I had to deal with decades ago.

Although the thought of the low temperature makes me a bit uneasy, dealing with the arctic blast shouldn’t be all that difficult. I have a handful of books to read, food to eat, and nowhere I need to go. I will have to go to work on Friday, but by then things will have warmed up a few degrees, enough that I won’t get frostbite walking a couple of blocks.

Luckily, I’m already in the habit of leaving a faucet dripping on frigidly cold nights. And there certainly have been a lot of them! We’ve been stuck in a deep freeze for a while. In fact, strangely for these parts where the sun shines so hotly even in winter, the snow that dumped on us more than a week ago still hasn’t melted.

But seasons come and go, so things will eventually change. In fact, today is the beginning of a new season — winter — which is rather an anti-climax since we’ve been having winter weather for so long now. Still, this is the end of the creeping darkness. The days will be getting longer. And spring is only three months away.