Thursday, April 22, 2010

Late April Snow, edited


We usually get at least a dusting or two between mid-April and mid-May, but I wasn't quite expecting this much accumulation, at least on the ground (the concrete patio retained enough heat to melt the snow).

It's been quite a hard winter, here in the upper hinterlands of New Mexico. We've probably had between 6-7 feet total over all the storms we've had at the house, since October. The last of that just melted last week. It's been hard on me, on the kid (and even the dog) schedule-wise, workwise, schoolwise, and otherwise. Only the SO has been okay with the long, hard winter we've had this year. But, he's a mountain man, so it's to be expected.

I'm a SoCal girl, though, and these hard winters are equally hard on me. Six months of snow and cold weather is more than enough for me to want to bolt to a warmer clime. But I won't, because I quite like NM, and really can't think of taking my daughter away from what's really her home, now. I can't fathom trying to bring her back to an urban environment and expect her to thrive as well as she is here on our little acre of ponderosa/pinyon-juniper. She's very comfortable in her rural, forested environment. I'm getting there, now that (ahem) the worst of winter is over and I can at least wear sandals occasionally.

I think it would be fine with all of us, really, for winter to be over, and to have the apple trees blossom, the penstemons bloom, and green grass abounding enough to make me sneeze. Even the SO.

The color of a snowy morning at the mesa.

1 comment:

Silver Fox said...

My mountain man found the winter to be a little too much, occasionally getting in the way of planned outings that were designed to be heavy on the snow aspect of things, but would have been heavier than desired. Me, I found the shoveling to be just a bit much during a couple storms, and yesterday's graupel, though always interesting (I love graupel for some reason), was more than I wanted.