As The Wheel Turns

DAY 5: May 5, 2015

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It seemed an eternity that everything was covered with white, the ground holding at least three feet of snow. Every morning, walking into the dining room with breakfast in hand, I’d sit and look out. It was bleak. The color was almost indescribable. Not exactly gray, but not brown, either. Just a muted dreariness. I felt that should be a new color on the charts in paint stores.

Some mornings, and for what seemed even longer than eternity, icicles which formed after the gutters overflowed, dripping sporadically became like photographs; a moment when the water turned to ice and became frozen in time. Only they weren’t exactly remaining static. They began to expand, fatten, almost, and the sharp spike grew down, reaching for the ground.

I never counted, but I’m sure the entire length of the back side of the house was a display of these pointed spears, Nature’s own battalion of weapons.

The days crept by, and the mornings barely changed. The temperatures remained sub zero, and I was taking bets which side of the house would tilt first, like a Titanic sinking sideways, instead of stem to stern.

Waiting for the supposed winter thaw, showed only a marginal change; drips and drops slowly marking the passage of day to night, and over again. One icicle got ambitious, and flowed down from the inside of the soffit, hanging outside the window, to become known as The Icicle Man. There was no good humor in it. But it did serve as one of the pictures I’d use in a Weird Wednesday picture challenge.

Then, one morning, as I sat eating, I noticed that several of the icicles had begun to meld together. And the one by the downspout had become so massive as to keep me awake at night wondering if that corner of the house was actually going to be pulled to the ground.

Then it began to happen. I noticed the drops of water were not quite a waterfall, but were racing down, perhaps pretending to be raindrops. And the field of snow, began to show real promise for diminishing, sometime this century. We saw the bottom of the door on the shed across the yard. It was a milestone when we saw the ground for the first time since last year. It began when the Winter Solstice had long passed, but the days were honestly lengthening. The trees had long lost their ice coating, and stood like petrified ancient artifacts.

We began seeing right outside the window at the top of the rise, actual spots of that odd dreariness color, widening, as if we were watching continents ripping apart after an ice age. The glaciers were moving away, calving, and abandoning their territorial rights.

Of course, as is my want, especially when things like snow banks, or passing clouds, remind me of things, I had to name the specific areas of snow. We had Australia just outside, visible, but I knew Antarctica was lurking in the unseen depths of the Shadow Realm. Mr. Quantum came in with his own name for certain parts. He sees the side of the yard, which is opposite to the side visible to me.

We watched these areas disappear, now swallowed up the dreariness, the straw grass.  And it sat like that until about two weeks three weeks ago. I felt like it took eons, but I’m not the Time Lord in the family.

It happened that one morning, sitting at the table, I spied with my little eye, a smudge of color, right on top of one of the branches of the forsythia bush which was visible from my window. Oh, wasn’t that a sort of fuzziness at the top of the trees that bordered the back of our yard? And the very ground itself, looking like the Sargasso Sea, suddenly had tufts of green. They were not putting out for the olfactory senses, but were little mop-tops pushing up, and I half expected to see them holding miniature guitars, and start regaling us with a medley of Beatles’ songs.

Within a week the forsythia was a blaze of yellow; brilliant magnificent color, that looked like the singular color upon an artist’s palette. That lasted perhaps four days before suddenly, one 80 degree day later, and the whole entire yard is awash in violets, little white pansy-like flowers, and dandelions, and the grass is seeming to grow noticeably right before my eyes! I’d noticed two maples beginning to green just after the forsythia began its come back.

This morning, bringing breakfast to the table, I looked out upon a full blown, summer yard. There isn’t a place that lacks green. It’s magical, and I feel like I’ve just been kissed by a prince and have awakened from a hundred year sleep.