When the rhyme, “April showers bring May flowers,” comes to mind, I’m sure that snow showers were not considered when it was written. But that is what happens all too often in New England at the beginning of the month. This has been a vacillating season with snow coming and going all too often. Last week I thought concern about snow was over after three or four consecutive Nor’easters hit. The weather warmed to the high 50s and I bared my legs to the weather on my bike. But no, a day after Easter, over 8 inches of snow covered the emerging green lawn, sprouting daffodils, and flowered bluebells and snowdrops.
The heavy snow had a slight toll, toppling an already weakened Rose of Sharon forcing me to cut most of it off and staking it down hoping that a few of the lower sucker shoots will form new trunks. That snow melted under warming temperatures and rain to be replaced yesterday by a 1-inch dusting that coved the yard for the morning and disappeared in the warming afternoon.
The sprouts of Spring green are stunted and buried. As they look for the opportunity to emerge, they are crushed back with the cold leaving a gray and brown background devoid of apparent life. But this is false as everything is ready: the forsythia are easy to force inside; the yellow daffodils are wrapped tightly in a green jacket waiting for a more permanent warming trend; and the buds on the quinces are fat, red and ready to burst.
But as a write, more flurries drop and the weather report for the next week is not encouraging. It appears that we may need another week or two before our vision of Spring emerges.
