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 It’s still spring!! I marvel at that because of our late snowstorms which made me wonder if I was in “The Long Winter”. I’ve often read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Long Winter” but had no burning desire to experience it. I have to admit the first late flurry of snow after I came home from a trip to New York excited me because I was just about to tap trees and wanted to get a good supply of syrup in the pantry. Now I’m glad to have that over and have the flowers coming up, birds singing, a last batch of syrup ready to can on the stove today and be ready to move on to pulling weeds and planting garden.

  Spring is such a season of hope and joy. But for some it isn’t.

  That is always true isn’t it?

  For some it isn’t.

  Can make me embarrassed about feeling upbeat and joyous.

  When I had a good friend who was struggling through depression after her husband’s death I listened to her frustration and rage as others went on about their business while she struggled,wept and ached. She told me once “I just wanted to strangle people or slap them. How dare they be happy while my lumberjack husband is dead?”

  I remember too the spring when I had a sick child in the hospital  I was struggling to think let alone find joy in spring. I walked in a fog barely noticing birds, flowers, mushrooms and then she was home and I still looked at life differently. Flowers were harbors of bees which could threaten my little girl’s life, birdsongs sounded less cheerful and mushrooms lay rotting where our neighbor had dropped them off on the kitchen counter while I busied myself sterilizing everything and everybody. A trip to a berry patch in summer when she seemed fairly well recovered turned nightmarish as she stood on a ground bee nest screaming and writhing and I did not have any medication in the car.

  So this spring I ‘m aware of the sorrow and suffering of others.

  I have friends struggling with sick children, death, dying, grief. Which makes me less callous and I alternately shout and whisper prayers for them. But simultaneously I am rejoicing with the land as it brings forth new life. I am enjoying even the cough of my little grandson and his cry when he falls and bumps his chin for the umpteenth time since it was not that long ago that I could only hear his voice in my imagination!  I am looking forward to a snatch of time with my little granddaughter too! And in the meantime I am dreaming up adventures of wiggling our toes in the sand and kneading bread dough on the kitchen counter. “You make a mess and Grandma will make bread and when we are done we’ll throw your mess away and bake mine. Then we’ll have a tea party….”,I mentally rehearse our conversation.

  I think getting older might be the cause of this tendency to hold sorrow lightly in one hand and grasp joy tightly with the other. It seems to me a gift from God. I’m grateful! I look forward to heaven where there will be no more suffering and no more sorrow and my kids always added, “Lots of peanutbutter sandwiches too Mama!” and in the in between time I enjoy little glimpse of it here and now!

  I hear a faint tick tick tick tick tick tick. No it isn’t my watch. It is the steady drip I discovered today from snow melting off the roof and dripping in through a missing shingle, onto my hutch and then down the back onto the kitchen floor!

  This! in the beginning of April since we have several inches of snow and today sunshine is beginning to liquify some from the rooftop.

  So much for global warming!

  I noticed the muskrat houses were huge the past fall and wondered at the predictions of a warm and short winter. The animals seem to know when they need to be ready for a long cold one and fortify their homes which makes them stick up out of the swamps higher than usual.

The cold did arrive late but  seems to be hanging around longer after a brief summery spell  making us think we were in for an early spring.

  My snowdrops came up with crocuses and bloomed. Then were smothered in more than a foot of snow.

  I am sure God laughs at us at times like these.

  This is tough weather for fruit farmers. The warm followed by cold likely has ruined crops of cherries in Michigan but is good for maple syrup producers. Even small ones like me can be pleased with the gift of a longer cold snap. That is why old timers called these late snows sugar snows.

Welcome to Wouldn’tchaknow it!

  The sun is shining and I am starting anew with this my old column from my newpapering days!

  I’ve been considering it for a year or more and today with #6 and #5 having danced out the door excitedly to go retreating and rallying with several thousand who like them like Jesus I decided to take the dive. There are so many words jostling for a chance to come out of my head to play upon the computer screen it is hard to choose which ones to give life to and which ones to save.

I am after all a chronic saver. Papa laughs at me and says I may be good for the environment but I am bad for ours due to all my saving for this and for that and you never know when it will come in handy to have this…..

  The log house is so quiet with not only #6,#5 and papa gone away but also #1 to #4 and even two little ones and three hubbies added to the clan but missing from the homestead. The red cocker is  snoring in the sunshine and the cats are banned to the outside.

  PreEaster when I had the taste of spring weather I dashed to the garden and planted several small rows of peas. Before that I started tomatoe plants which are growing happily on two chairs in front of a southern window and right at the last minute before Easter I sprinkled some pansy seeds on potting soil and they are just peeking out of the crumbles of dirt now.

  On the kitchen windowsill I have my one remaining rosemary plant flanked by two orchid corsages standing stiffly one each side to remind us that the Lord has risen indeed and the plants will be back soon from under their blanket of snow just as He came back from the grave. I see green daffodil and jonquil leaves coming out in tufts here and there at the edge of the lawn now! Oh what a relief it is to have the sun shine and the snow stop for one day!