Well I am beginning to believe that I shouldn't take pictures of flowers. A day or so ago I took this picture.
It was our first daffodil of the season. It you add that to the Robin that I saw in our backyard, the signs of springs were beginning to look encouraging. The truth is that we live in the mountains and snow can come quickly. Last night the winds started howling and the weathermen started talking about snow. It just did not seem possible. In fact I felt comfortable enough yesterday that I had taken some green grass pictures which I planned to use to torment my northern friends. Of course most of them, except my college roommate, Gus, have stopped communicating with me until their snow at least slows down. Gus seems to tolerate my weather interest a little better than some of the others. Of course he and I spent the summer of 1970 driving a Dodge Powerwagon pickup to Alaska and back so we have been through a fair amount together. However, I suspect Gus and my other northern friends will enjoy what all of us on the mountain saw when we got out of bed this morning.
This was the spring snow that greeted us this morning. I think it is time for these snow events to stop.
It was a shock to my system and of course to Malarky, our cat. He is pretty much a fair weather cat. I'll try to post some more pictures later in the day since watching the cat try to figure out this late season snow was fairly interesting, maybe even more interesting than today's news.
Watching the cat in the snow wasn't the only interesting thing that happened this morning on the Mountain. Fortunately for my status in the world of not sleeping in, I awoke this morning at 6:35 am. Of course, I had to deal with the peanut that Randy had so kindly returned to my newspaper box yesterday . I decided that the best course of action was to tie a ribbon around it and return it to Randy's paper box. I managed to accomplish the task in spite of the snow. I even managed to get out of clothes back into my tee shirt and crawl back under the covers before all the heat had disappeared from my spot in the bed. My wife, Glenda, was sleeping so soundly that I don't even think she was aware that I had left and returned.
About 7:30 am after enjoying my warm spot in the bed for a suitably long time, I got up and put the coffee on and started checking my e-mails. I decided a few pictures to record the snow were in order. Then it hit me that I should take a picture of Randy's newspaper box with his paper in it and my box empty. I didn't even bother to put on my Birkenstocks. I walked out in my socks opened the garage door and got ready to record the historic moment. Then I couldn't believe my eyes, Sara, Randy's wife was in the driveway cleaning off their Grand Cherokee. I was a little worried since Randy had been sick on Thursday, but I called out to Sara and asked her where she was headed. Of course she was headed to the one thing any woman will not miss, a hair appointment. My mother, who was over 93 when she died almost a year ago, went to a hair appointment just a couple of day before she died. She had hardly been able to go to meals but she was not going to let anything get in the way of getting her hair fixed.
Here's this morning's picture to prove that my newspaper box which is the one on the left side of the picture was empty before Randy's. Of course it is a good thing that Sara had a hair appointment since she actually got the newspaper and the peanut for Randy who must have still been in bed.
The good news about the spring snow is that it went as quickly as it came. By a few minutes after eleven am this morning it had all disappeared on our deck except for one spot which I am sure is gone by now.
Surely that was the last snow. This is Virginia, the land where you can actually survive winter and still wear your tennis shoes, something that is unthinkable in Canada. Certainly boots are the rule in the snow belts like New Brunswick. People in the urban areas like Halifax might be able to get by part of the time, but even there boots will come out on a regular basis not once a year like in Roanoke.
Aside from the blue sky and the absence of snow, I heard from an old friend, Roscoe, this morning. Roscoe used to run the Book Shop at Sweet Briar College. Sweet Briar is a magical place in the spring. I often said if they could bottle how spring smells at Sweet Briar, they would not have to do all the fund raising. When we first moved back from Canada and were living in Columbia, Maryland, I used to love to come to Sweet Briar in late March and early April. In fact back in the early days of computing on campuses, Roscoe used to help us put on some great shows which introduced a lot of faculty members from other small Virginia colleges to the potential of computers in the classroom. Sweet Briar was an early small college pioneer in using computers in education. I have probably seen more computers stores in my life than most people. Roscoe's Book Shop was a model computer store and since it was attached to a nice place to grab a cup of tea or shop for ladies clothing, even Glenda enjoyed visiting. We were regular visitors there when our daughter Erin was one of their students.
Now that I have my big worry out of the way I can start thinking about how Randy will redeliver my peanut. Of course I need a haircut, and that means a fine discussion with my barber, Jim, on the challenges we face with the politicians inside the beltway so I will likely have more to say tomorrow.
Maybe the view from the mountain won't be as snowy tomorrow morning.
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