dreams of summer and winter
This evening I'm enjoying eager anticipation for two seasons at once. I've spent time the last few days pouring over the seed catalogs (and their online equivalents), then wandering around the frozen garden trying to imagine where on earth I can put all the things I want to plant. My mind's eye is filled with visions of greenery, of beds and containers overflowing with abundant vegetative growth, of baskets of delicious tomatoes (my mind's eye skips over the hornworms). I'll order the seeds this weekend most likely, and then in a week or two the lights and the heater will be on down in the basement as the first sprouts of the 2013 garden season—they'll be onions—poke their little heads out of the dirt.
Of course, it'll be quite a while before anything gets in the ground outside, and we're reminded of that dramatically this evening as we face warnings for the Blizzard Of The Century that's apparently bearing down on us. The National Weather Service says we can expect 18-24 inches of snow, but that hasn't stopped blizzard-starved New Englanders from confidently predicting 30, 35, 40 inches of snow over tomorrow and Saturday. Even 18 inches would be pretty epic; 18.2 in Boston would be enough to put the storm into 10th place all time for Boston, knocking the December 2010 storm out of the top ten. I'm all for it. Unlike a December storm—that particular one marked the start of a crazy snowy winter where we never saw the ground until March—a February blizzard won't leave much of a long-term mark. It should be just enough to give us some fun snow adventures, and maybe get Harvey the snow-fort he's been dreaming of, before melting away to help water and fertilize my little seedlings. The best of both worlds!
