From The Neighborhood in Southern New Hampshire

I took a walk the other day to see how The Neighborhood was doing after twelve or thirteen snowfalls this winter. March 6 it was, to be exact, two weeks or so before the equinox is supposed to herald spring. On this day the land was still black and white and crusty gray and the sky looked like lumpy porridge.

There have been days when heavenly blue has kicked the lumps out of the way to make way for sparkly sunshine and people walk around saying, Isn’t this wonderful weather! Next day we’re back to lumpy porridge and crusty gray and nobody is out walking, unless there is a dog involved.

To be clear, none of the snowfalls were momentous, but when the thermometer doesn’t budge above freezing and dips down into the teens or below and nothing melts, the inches add up and fluffy, inviting snow turns to rock. Piles of it line the roads or wherever plowmen can find a handy spot. The muddy edges of the piles, melted by salt, splatter vehicles, and vehicles splatter back in return, assuring a tit-for-tat sparring with no winner.

There has to be some sort of accolade for having the biggest pile of snow in the neighborhood, but nobody except me and the plowman seems to have noticed. It sits in jumbled layers on our lawn next to our driveway, a mixed-up geologic history of the winter. I guess everyone is too concerned with their own snow piles to give credit to anyone whose snow pile might be bigger.

As winter came on, our new solar walkway lights seemed to turn defective, so feeble was their glow. We finally noticed that the batteries were capped with a beanie of snow. Fortunately, before either of us got around to thinking about clearing the lights, poles and all disappeared into drifts, and we were spared the trouble of putting on snow boots.

There is an aesthetic advantage to frequent snowfalls. As soon as a snowfall is on its way to crusty gray, a new one comes to polish the land and brighten our spirits. The disadvantage is that the cost of plowing lots of little snowfalls is definitely greater than the cost of plowing a couple of big ones. Snowfalls, I have discovered, are definitely cheaper in bulk, but our plowman is trying to put kids through college, so I don’t begrudge the fees.

Our backyard has never looked crusty gray. We’ve had lots of high wind this year that swept the snow clean, so for a while it shined like tundra spread with Marshmallow Fluff. Odd, pointed lumps, I finally figured out, were chunky boxwoods that the wind tented in snowdrifts shaped like over-sized Hershey kisses. (Do you see a leading trend here?)

Now that some melting has begun and the snow is turning crusty (but not gray), twigs that fell from the dying ash tree are poking up from below and the footprints of small animals are pocking the surface. I have not gone out to explore because I did not want to track Marshmallow Fluff into the house.

The winds were so ferocious this year that one of our patio umbrellas was totally torn off its spokes. It would have flown to freedom but part of it was stuck under a heap of frozen snow that had turned into rock. Usually we take the umbrellas in before cold weather but we forgot this year because winter took us by surprise.

I was mulching beds late November when the cold hit and the mulch froze. Did you ever try to spread frozen mulch? I would not recommend it. I was not dismayed, however, as I fully expected a few warm sunny days that would give me time to put the garden to bed.

The sun reneged, snow fell, and I dropped my tools and never went out again. I don’t remember where the rest of the mulch is, maybe in a couple of wheelbarrows, but I can’t find the wheelbarrows. O well.

If I didn’t know better, I’d blame the ferocious winds on my next-door neighbors. They cut down several large pine trees that were probably a windbreak. But our neighbors on the lake with plenty of pine trees on their property are getting hammered with gusts, so I shouldn’t cast stones (or snowballs).

I have noticed that in general people like to look at pine trees on somebody else’s property, but nobody likes to clean up after pine trees on their own property. We have no pine trees.

We live in a concrete and brick house (I call it The Fortress) so we do not notice the ferocious winds unless we happen to go outside and hear what sounds like a squadron of World War II B-17s flying overhead.

Our indoor creatures, the mouse and the bear, keep us posted. If gusts reach over 25 miles an hour, the mouse starts squeaking. Over 35 or 40, the bear in the chimney starts growling and rattling his rickety cage. These noisy warnings can be unnerving.

We could oil the hinges of the front door and the mouse would stop squeaking and we could cap the chimney to keep the bear quiet, but then how would we know the wind was blowing? (We could look out the window, too, but that requires common sense and raising the blinds.)

While the snow was blowing and the temps were falling I read about an extraordinary celestial event this winter: most all the planets would be lined up in the early night sky at the end of February. For some reason I feel obligated to observe these celestial extravaganzas, after all, many of them won’t come for another hundred years, but secretly I hope for porridge.

As luck would have it, the porridge cleared and there I was out in the sub-teens craning my neck and counting planets. Immediately I found two bright orbs near the moon and I felt right smart. Primed by my initial success, I searched for more and found some other faint lights in the general vicinity of the sky and called the observation a success. I did not see any neighbors craning their necks.

I am especially proud of my horticultural winter activity. I began a chapter of the Dead Plants Society headquartered in my living room. Last summer Susan had picked up a couple of small tropical plants for a few dollars, said I must have them, and I said, of course, what are they?

Mandevilla, she said, and they looked smashing on either side of the French doors that open on to the patio. Well, I wasn’t going to leave them outside to languish in snow and wind, even if they are inexpensive to replace.

Once inside they rewarded me with crumbling leaves. They were either dormant or dead. This will never do, I said, so I formalized the affair by creating the DPS, of which I am the CEO and CWC (Chief Water Carrier). Then I added a rosemary that was several shades grayer than a healthy rosemary, probably because I had inadvertently overwatered it.

The geraniums and the prayer plant were not invited because they looked too healthy. A fellow walker asked me if I was starting any seeds for the spring. I told her I was not. Candidacy for the DPS was closed for the season and no further recruits would be accepted.  (But I did not tell her that was the reason. She thinks I know what I am doing in the plant department and I don’t want to disillusion her.)

Back to my walk on March 6. The temps are up in the forties, even the fifties on this day, depending on your angle of view as you read the thermometer, and there seems to be a lot of activity on the snow front. Snow has been slumping and shrinking lately, probably due to sublimation.

(Aside: That is my new vocabulary word that means snow is evaporating directly into the atmosphere, skipping the sloppy stage of melting. I do not know if there are other applications to this word; for instance, if someone has lost weight, can you politely say, My, how you’ve sublimated.)

The snow that was passed over for sublimating was melting vigorously, streaming down steep driveways and puddling the road and finding its way into the storm sewer that now sounded like a gurgling brook. If I closed my eyes I could imagine myself in a leafy green glen with a singing stream, but the illusion was short lived.

Even the crusty gray rock piles were adding to the lusty flow, though they seem to be melting from below, not sure why, you’ll have to chat with a weatherman to find out.

For those who like conclusions to their stories, and for those who may have already forgotten what they read (no hard feelings) since I took my walk a couple of weeks ago, skies have become less lumpy, shrubs have reappeared on the tundra, I found my wheelbarrows, the path lights shine bright at night, and the temp can reach 100 degrees when the sun hits the thermometer at a certain angle, telling us boldly that he is back in charge.

Some of my spears of spring (daffodils, not asparagus) are poking through, and the once hidden garden is begging to be tidied. We still have the biggest pile of snow on the block but it is fast becoming a cipher on the land. And spring seems to have arrived on time.

Except that it is sleeting today.