Weekly Photo Challenge:Spring

 

It may not look like spring to most but here in Minnesota when the snow starts melting during the days and refreezes at night you see a lot of ice that looks like this.

My favorite ice in the springtime was the ice that was along the sidewalks that we would walk on as we walked to school just to hear it crunch.

This morning we woke again to thick fog which also reminds me that it is spring. As hard as you may look across the lake you cannot see the other shore.

Soon the snow will be gone and all that will be remembered is the Sunday afternoon that I went for a walk across the lake in thick fog in search of some signs of spring.

Just couldn’t end without a little bit of green spied just below my livingroom window this afternoon.

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In A Fog

This morning my mind is literally and figuratively in a fog. 

I stepped outside this morning in my plaid flannel nightshirt and black snow boots to capture this photo. We are socked in with heavy fog this morning. In the background of this picture is a snow-covered lake that you can usually make out the shorelines even with snow on the lake but not so this morning.

As I was walking down to the lake to take a few pictures I heard sounds of birds singing which amazed me because before I went outside I had watched my bird feeder this morning for birds to come and none had before I went out and none since I came back in. The other prevalent sound was the dripping of water. I could hear it falling from the trees and roof of our home.  As I walked through the snow it had a crunching sound and not the almost silent sound of walking through fresh snow.

The figuratively nature of my mind’s fog this morning is in preparing for an upcoming trip. I don’t know if you are like me when you plan for a trip, you start adding things to your to-do list that have needed to be done for years and somehow you think you will finally do them just because you plan to leaving town. My husband looked at me like I was crazy when I said that we needed to load up and deliver the crib that we had borrowed from his brother and wife almost a year and a half ago. It has only been sitting against the wall in our bedroom for the past month. 

Do I have a fear that I will not return from this trip so everything I have ever borrowed must be returned to its proper owner?  Certainly not, but why not use the reason for leaving town to get some of those things accomplished. I’ve concluded that if I only had less stuff it would be easier to leave more often.  Too much of my day is caring for all the things we have accumulated. I have downsized a lot in the past year but there is so much more that can go but I want to do it in a responsible way.

I don’t want to fill the landfill with useful items so I need to find places to donate. I need to assess just how many pots and pans I really need.  Afterall I only have four burners on the top of my stove and my oven can only hold so many baking dishes at one time. Clothes are a problem around my home. I am not a clothes hound by any means but because of the different seasons we need to have a variety of clothes for the different seasons and all the winter clothes take up more space.  I was thinking that if we didn’t live where there was a winter how much less storage I would need.

Time to emerge from the fog and head to work in the fog with renewed energy to carry out great things today or at least a few important things on my list knowing that some time off awaits me soon. 🙂

 

Day Five and Counting…

Fog Again...

Yesterday while I was at work we had our first thunderstorm of the year complete with pea sized hail, thunder and lightning. One cheery customer had to share his thoughts on our first thunderstorm he said that since our first thunderstorm was on March 11 all we had to do is add 6 months to that date to figure out when our first snow will be. September 11, 2010 was his prediction. We haven’t even finished this winter and already he is telling me when our next winter will begin. I can hardly wait.

Today is day five of foggy overcast weather in Minnesota. The earlier forecast this week was for the weather to clear by Friday afternoon which was today. No sun yet and the weather forecast for tomorrow is fog, overcast again, and chance of rain in the afternoon and evening. Its hard to get excited about fog. When the forecast is for snow people anticipate the snow and look forward to the possibility of no school if there is enough snow but what do you with fog??? You can’t make fog men or fog angels and they usually don’t call school off for fog. Once a few years ago they had a two hour late start due to thick fog but after two days of thick fog they decided that school would start at the regular time even with the thick fog. Too much of a disruption in the school day to start late and it looked like the weather pattern was here to stay for a few days.

The problem with fog is everything is wet and damp. The longer we are wet and soggy from the fog it seems that people get more irritable, including me. We are stuck in limbo. There are no snow activities like snowmobiling, skiing, and snowboarding in the rain and fog. We can’t get out and enjoy the warmer temps that come with the fog because it is too wet and damp. When I was teaching school we didn’t like to send the elementary students out for recess during weather like this because they would come back in soaking wet, so by the end of the week they were crabby and irritable just like the adults.

I’m ready for spring. This Sunday we set the clocks ahead for Daylight Savings Time. That usually starts Spring for me at least in my mind. I like when its time to go home from work and it is still light outside. I feel like I still have some time left in my day to accomplish something outside of work in my yard or home. My energy level is directly linked to the amount of sunshine I get. If it is a bright sunny day I get so much more accomplished than a cloudy overcast day or the short days of winter. Its time for some progress around home. I find myself wandering from room to room looking out the window just staring at the white nothingness of the fog. Bring on the sun!