Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Happy First Day of Spring!

Laura Breck
As I look out upon my patio, which I can’t see because it’s buried under about three feet of snow, I comfort myself with the knowledge that the sun is inexorably getting closer to Minnesota with each and every passing day.

Not fast enough for everyone, though! A note went out on our neighborhood Facebook group: “Should we postpone the Easter Egg Hunt, since the park will still be snowed under?” This came from a family whose children are grown and gone.

“Absolutely not!” came a plethora of replies. “We’ll dress our kids in snowpants and boots and have them trudge through the snow to find the eggs,” one father vowed. “They can bring their sleds and slide down the hills, too,” another parent suggested.

Our official Easter Egg Stuffer, a wonderful mother of a teenager, who has, since her child was a toddler, tucked candy and coins into nearly a thousand plastic eggs every year, replied, “Don’t you dare cancel it!” She added a smiley face after the comment, but I imagined her knee-deep in pastel-colored plastic eggs and speckled malted milk balls as she wrote it.

Minnesotans are made of hardy stock, and there are not many occurrences that can grind our traditions to a halt. We’ve carried on with our Easter Egg Hunt in snowstorms and torrential downpours. Our Halloween Pumpkin Carving Contest has seen near-tornado conditions as well as early snowstorms. Our August neighborhood picnic has withstood 100+ degree temperatures with 94% humidity as well as (no, not snowstorms, but you thought I was going to say it, didn’t you!) unseasonable Alberta Clippers bringing forty-degree temps.

This last weekend’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade was a cold one with thirty-degree temperatures, and all anyone could talk about was last year’s record high of over eighty. (Weather is a favorite topic of conversation here in the land of 10,000 frozen lakes.)

Back to my patio view. The sun is shining brightly on the pure white snow, but I know it’s a deceptive sight. The temperature out there is five degrees right now, and we have a wind chill. My Welcome Spring activity today will not be a jog along the Mississippi river as I’d hoped, but will consist of a half-hour on the elliptical in the spare room, watching TV. Soon, the sun will prevail and Minnesotans will be able to come out of hibernation. But…not today.

What are your plans for this first day of spring?

Have a wonderful day!
Laura
~Smart Women ~Sexy Men ~Seductive Romance
LauraBreck.com
~Dancing in a Hurricane is available in digital formats at Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble and in paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Createspace
~Love in the Land of Lakes is available in digital format at Smashwords, All Romance Ebooks, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, and in paperback at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Createspace

3 comments:

Margo Hoornstra said...

Laura,
We're in Michigan. Our first day of spring is snow covered too. Along with the ice and the wind and the cold. (Sigh)

Barbara Edwards said...

I'm so glad we're in Florida for the bad weather. I don't enjoy snow like I did when I built snowmen or forts with the kids.

Jannine Gallant said...

We got rain our first day of spring. Rain, really! I'm in Tahoe. It isn't supposed to rain in March. The ski season isn't over yet. It promises to be an odd spring.