Sunday, February 02, 2014

Winter, Says the Groundhog

Well, it's official. There's no doubting the great prognosticator: Winter is here for six more weeks. If I had the least suspicion of the authenticity, the genuine legitimacy of Phil the Groundhog as weather forecaster, I have only to turn to Warren and Emily's expedition to central command: Punxsutawney, PA. They saw it all go down, and it was legit.

Sorry, Warren. I know you're ready for Spring. For Blue skies, with temperatures well above freezing. Have courage.

We're a bit disappointed, too. Not because of winter, not because of cold weather, and a long wait for spring, but because we didn't get to have as much fun a Groundhog Day as last year. Last year we were on a Winter Quest! We went into the woods, in search of winter and snow. We had a picnic beneath the pines. It was beautiful and inspiring. The woods smelled good. The air was cold. We reveled in patches of snow.

The year before last, we were reveling in a day of backyard pleasures, with chickens and cats, and recounting the fun we had in the power outage. The first time we celebrated Groundhog Day, was with a bonfire and backyard campout the night before, and Groundcakes for breakfast! When we can, we like to go all out.

This year we were foiled by an Accidental Rube Goldberg Disaster. Yesterday a shelf in the garage came loose, and sent things crashing down. The shelf itself landed on the fire extinguisher, which propped the shelf, but also broke the pin: The entire contents of the fire extinguisher sprayed, quite dramatically, everywhere! Everywhere. The noise from the falling stuff, breaking glass… it was terrific, and as we ran to the garage we were met with a solid vapor of dust, like a gas. We had no idea what it was, and you can imagine how scary that felt. We literally had to wait for the dust to settle before we could figure out what-the-heck-happened. The dust covered every surface in the garage, through the hall and into the kitchen. If it's in our house, it needs cleaning. This pretty much redirected all our plans, hopes, dreams, and paper towels. Sigh.

No one was hurt. And there was no fire, or earthquake, or rhinoceros stampede. We're grateful. We have dust masks, and our humor is intact.

The stuff in a fire extinguisher? Nuisance Dust! So apt. So very apt. "Filled with Plus-Fifty C® Sodium Bicarbonate Dry Chemical Powder. HMIS 1-0-0. Talc, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Nuisance Dust. Irritant."

We have six more weeks of winter. And so, perhaps in the next six weeks we will find a day when we can go in search of snow, or picnic beneath pines. Locally, our winter lacks rain. We may get some tonight, tomorrow. The nasturtiums down by the lagoon are thriving. So are the ones growing in our garden bed.

No more Bird Watcher sightings, but we do see some lovely birds.

And dolphins, too. I'm glad we've made little excursions, walks, and outings to enjoy the sights, and appreciate the weather. We especially love walking in the rain! Whatever the season, whatever we are celebrating, it's always so much better with time to enjoy nature.



"Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius."
~Pietro Aretino

3 comments:

Tami @ Lemon Tree Tales said...

Noooooooo! No more winter please! We have snow for you. It snowed Thursday evening, Friday and Saturday but not too much. It's about 6" or so and it's the dry snow that doesn't stick together very well. No snowmen here. Yesterday we hooked the dogs up to their 25' retractable leashes and had fun letting them run around the backyard. Now we have people and dog trails all around the house. No more pristine snow. And luckily for us it never got down to single digits. Yay!

Tami @ Lemon Tree Tales said...

Hope the nuisance dust wasn't too hard to clean up. Guess you'll all be running out to Home Depot to buy more fire extinguishers.

warren said...

I still love Phil but he really let me down...this has been quite a winter. I guess my white stuff in the garage is better than your though!