Goodbye February

Today we say good bye to February and now we are two months into 2022. I had a lesson scheduled for Thursday night but we were having some freezing rain so I cancelled. It turned out that the roads didn’t freeze so it would have been fine but I’m discovering that as I get older the less I like to actually venture out in winter weather. It is hard to want to leave the house when it is dark and cold but toss in snow or ice and the pull to stay inside becomes stronger.

The good news is that we didn’t get enough ice to cause any major problems. It did make the trees glisten in the sun and that was pretty. But it also made walking on our decks to fill the bird feeders a bit more of a problem. Had something fall off the deck and when I went to retrieve it, I realized that the ground was so iced over that it was better to just wait until the ice was all gone.

Turns out it stayed below freezing for most of Friday and it was cloudy and gloomy so the ice hung around. There was a studio party on Friday night but I wasn’t feeling it so I just decided to take the night off as well. Again, the cold and dark and gloom of late winter just made me want to stay inside.

Even with above freezing temperatures over the weekend, some of the ice stubbornly refuses to melt and go away. The trees are all clear but that also meant you risked being dripped on if you walked or drove under them. Since the sun was out, we did get out to walk on both days which was nice.

As we move out of February, we move closer to spring. This week we are supposed to have some slightly above normal temperatures. Nothing that will feel really warm but it will be more spring like than we’ve experienced lately. This really becomes a double edged sword because March can still be cold, damp and nasty but, by this time of year, I’m so sick of the cold and the calendar says Spring starts so it is even more disappointing if it doesn’t. You expect cold, snow and ice in January and February so, even though it isn’t pleasant, you can mentally deal with it.

My wife is kind of in the same boat. She was talking about cleaning out the flower pots to get ready for flowers. When I told her we were still about six weeks away, she didn’t believe me but mid-April is about the earliest time to plant annuals around here. Last year, we jumped the gun and had to pull all the pots inside when we got a freak cold/snow in April.

Two weeks from now, there is a flower and patio show which is kind of a sneak preview for spring. It was an annual event for us but two years ago it was the beginnings of the pandemic and we decided that a crowded indoor event might not be the smartest thing to do. Last year, it was just cancelled outright but this year looks like a go. Looking forward to it even though we hate crowds and the patio designs are stuff we’d never be able to implement. But there will be flowers and we can pretend it is spring for a couple of hours.