And. . .It's Spring

It's been a gray week here in Lake Go-Be-One.  The sky was gray, the trees were gray, the grass was gray, the mud was gray.  The temperature held at a steady 42 degrees.  This has been the most dreary winter, and now spring, that I can remember, with precious few buds of anything.  The weather hasn't been exceptionally cold or hot; it has been one, long  slog of low-hanging clouds and endless mud.

Paul Farris has not tilled his garden, although he says he has the tomato seedlings started.  In a moment of ridiculous hope, I spaded the tomato patch beside the fence.  Yesterday snow fell on it, making the mud even yet stickier.  Typically the earliest leaves appear on the weeping willows, but this week their drooping, breezy branches hang in a sort of brown and gray desperate failure.

What spring should look like, but not this year.

The farmer down on Cherokee Lane was out spreading something on the winter grass this week; I hope it was fertilizer.  But the only tractors out and about have been the ones carrying hay to feed cattle mucking along in sludgy fields. Daffodil blossoms lie defeated in soggy grass, unable to  hold up their yellow heads.  Yes, they're blooming, but only in the strictly legal interpretation.

There is an old hymn, No. 227 in Heavenly Highway Hymns, a Choice Collection of Gospel Songs, both Old and New, Suitable for Religious Work and Worship, Shape Notes Only.  "Beautiful Isle" begins, "Somewhere the sun is shining, Somewhere the song birds dwell. . ."  Somewhere else, but not here.  Not at this time.

Too cold to work in the yard; too wet to plant lettuce, regardless of what the planting sign is; too cloudy to set pansies out in the pots.  Cows struggle in the mire left by daily rain and/or snow, unable to graze on the dun-colored grass.  This third week of spring continues absurdly gray and wet. 

Wait. What?  Never mind. The sun is out!