3/21/07

First day of spring...


It's the first full day of spring and the sky is the color of dirty cotton balls and misting just enough wet to be annoying. Here in Minnesota a warm sunny spring day is always welcome and even a rain has its place but everything in between is just miserable. That's today in a nutshell.

Maybe its about the dirty snow. Snow around here stays beautiful for just a few days after it falls and then the plows get a hold of it and color it with salt and sand. As the seasons change most of the beautiful snow that's left on lawns and parks quickly melts away and we're left with piles of dirty gray snow on parking lots and boulevards where it's been placed by the process of clearing the street. It has all of the cold forlorn of snow with none of the romance. It's just a pile.

If the sun is hot even the most stubborn deposit of the stuff on the north end of whatever will quickly disappear. If the rain comes it'll wash away through the storm sewers and eventually find its way to the Mississippi River, a salty dirty gift no one wants and New Orleans has no choice but to take. But when the day is gray with only a drab of rain it stays put, a reminder of winter's cold and spring still to come.


This is that kind of day, a day somewhere in between without the first warm rays of the spring sun or the clean washing of a good spring shower. It's a day to watch and wait, take of care of inside things and have patience for the inevitable change of seasons. There is a truth in nature that supersedes even the emotions of a gray day in March.


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