Back about October or November, the National Weather Service disseminated its long-range forecast for the Southeast. We were to have a warmer than normal winter, and a dry one.
I read that with the same sense of foreboding I get when a sportswriter says that Carolina won’t have any trouble with, say, Georgia Tech, seeing as how the latter is below .500 with a couple of really bad losses. The Tar Heels lost to the Yellow Jackets by 20, and by Christmas, we had seen 3 snowstorms.
I gave the NWS meteorologists a break, however, since their forecast was for winter, and on Christmas Day, winter was technically less than a week old. Maybe we were just having a really cold fall.
It’s still winter. We’ve experienced a fourth snowstorm, and it looks like a fifth is on the way for next week. I don’t mind snow so much, but I hate being cold. And it has been cold. The other day I calculated that for 55% of the days since December 3, the temperature has not made it above 40. I feel like Jimmy Buffet in “Boat Drinks:”
This morning, I shot six holes in my freezer;
I think I’ve got cabin fever…
What’s happening in my garden? Your guess is as good as mine because it’s too cold to go see. My neighbor’s tree limb fell into my yard during one of the December snowstorms, and it’s still there. because I’m not going out and get frostbite to haul it to the street.
I did see a bluebird checking out the bird house last Sunday, so they, at least, hold out hope that winter will end.
And on my way in from the car the other day I brushed the dead leaves from the base of one of the hellebores and saw that it was getting ready to bloom.
A flicker showed up at my feeder during the last snow, and has been hanging around ever since.
At least I have plenty to do inside these days…
It finally started snowign here in Nebraska this month, and the flickers and other birds have come out en masse to the bird feeders since then. Still, it’s -5 here right now, so give me 22, let alone 40. PLEASE.
Minus 5! How do you people live?