After yesterday's post extolling the virtues of snow, I thought I needed to clarify a little...in November when you haven't seen snow for a number of months and have been scorched/drenched by heat and humidity all summer, then snow is quite a welcome relief, and very beautiful. However, in late March, when you are standing out in the middle of your driveway clearing out a foot of snow for the third time in as many days, and you are so sweaty that your hat is making your head itch, but the wind is too cold for you to go hatless, and every muscle in your body hurts because you've spent the last three days shoveling snow, and you know how futile it is, because they're forecasting forty degrees in a couple of days and it's all going to melt anyway but you have to clear it out because you have to go to the grocery store to buy food and your hubby has to get to work, and he can't help because he had a heart attack a few years ago and snow shoveling is at the top of the Activities Not to Engage In list, then, my friends, then, snow is not beautiful at all.
I speak from bitter experience.
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11 comments:
yeah, I'm with you..I'd give anything to live back in a climate like I lived in CA where I had to go VISIT the snow...
It's pretty but I don't like living where it does so regularly...
and yeah, I've even had awesomely beautiful experiences while living here in the snow...
I like not having seasons myself....but I know that is probably not the case for you as you grew up in this sort of climate...
winter, though, it does not literally depress me as in someone who has seasonal affective disorder (I don't) does depress me in a sort of generic way...everything appears to be dead to me...I like my ever-green CA.
Gianna,
Good to hear from you!
I had heard from a friend who moved from Minnesota to California that California has two seasons. The Brown Season and The Green Season. Not sure which was which..
As far as the seasons around here go, now that I have dogs, I think of them as The Wet Season (winter), The Muddy Seasons (spring and fall), and The Mostly Dry But Sometimes Muddy Season (summer). I dread The Muddy Seasons with a passion, and am wondering if I should replace my current not-so-oatmeal-anymore (pre-dog) carpet with something that has brown dog-paw shaped patterns on it...
well.. the brown season is actually the summer...the grasses and therefore the "golden" hills of CA (which are really brown), are dry in the summer) in winter the rains make the grass green...
but it really depends where you are and the trees are mostly evergreen everywhere and if you go somewhere like the Santa Cruz mountains it's quite lush and green all year long (it's forest)
then of course if you go to the desert it's, well, desert, though there are flowering seasons...but Joshua Tree is one of my favorite places in the world...and it's very sparse but has these awesome trees everywhere that exist nowhere else in the world...they make me think of a Dr. Seuss world.
CA has a lot of different micro-eco systems as well as micro-climates...
so you also get tons of snow in the Sierras...and it's freezing...BUT the trees are all evergreen so it's not like here where everything looks dead.
I love the diversity of CA.
Oh, I love, love, love snow and refuse to think of the down side. Thank goodness we don't get near as much snow as you do. However, right after we moved here last January we had several days that we couldn't get out of our own driveway because it was too slick. We will have to be more prepared for that this year.
Enjoy the snow for now and don't think about March. It is a long way off. ;-)
I am SO totally with you! Yes, the first snow is 'novel' in a way, but I really only want to see the stuff between Thanksgiving and New Years. After that, it can just go the hell away, thank you very much! Unfortunately, here in the frozen tundra we have 6 months of potential winter. Hopefully this year won't be like last year where we have snow that lasts from November through April! 8-O
Hi Jazz,
Oh yeah...the first snow is great, but as the snow keeps coming it gets less and less intriguing, and more and more annoying. Luckily where I live it doesn't snow much...but it rains, and rains, and rains, and rains...all winter. It's depressing.
Tamara, Heidelberg, Aqua--
Trying not to think about March. Trying really hard. There is, of course, no snow now, it all melted away at the first opportunity...well...Heidelberg already knows this as she lives only a few miles away...but the rest of you can wipe those hilarious images of me trying to hitch my huskies up to sled right out of your tiny little minds...although, actually, Canis Dafticus pulling a sled is an exercise in hilarity...he keeps turning around and looking behind him with this worried look on his face, like what is this behind me, and then, oh, my god, it's following me..., and finally, running at top speed, GET THIS THING AWAY FROM ME!!!
Jazz,
Very funny! Thanks for the clarification. My husband grew up in Ohio and since he was the only son (times were different then and it was a "males only" chore), he had to shovel it, and vowed never to do it again.
He also used to talk about walking a mile in the snow to get to school. It was only when we visited Kent, Ohio, a number of years ago that we learned his house was one block from school!
Susan
Susan,
Oh, that's funny! My husband often regales the kids with tales of his childhood sufferings, like walking to 16 miles to school...uphill...both ways...
I love snow as a result of growing up in Ca, like Gianna said, we would go visit the snow!
Now, I still get excited when it snows where I live, but the last few years I too was sick of that shoveling the driveway and yes it is hard work!
I still love it--when it's the first snow of the season I always feel like I am in a snowglobe, it's so quiet...
Stephany,
Oh, I do love the snow, especially before xmas...at night, all those big fluffy flakes coming down...you're right, it is like being in a snow-globe!
But the driveway clearing gig can be totally soul-destroying! The kids are getting big enough that they can do it now, and I'm getting to the point where I'm going to let them. It's amazing what they'll do for a mug of hot cocoa with marshmallows!
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