Ramblings for rainy days: It's a spring a-coming

Between society's squabbles, disinterested doctors, political muscle-showing, Easter sales and noisy neighbors, insidiously and creeping up step by step, the spring finally made it's way here.

I waited for Her, I begged for Her to come faster, and finally, She's here.

Not a moment too soon. I was getting so tired of winter. Don't get me wrong, I do like winter. I just don't like Oklahoma winter. For me winter has to happen with thick white blankets of snow, that get even thicker, slowly, from snowflakes dancing lazily in the air. The house is warm, there is always hot tea on the table and some kind of baked heaven (scones, muffins, you take your pick) and there are dogs sleeping near the fireplace, a cat purring in someone's lap, and a cinnamon stick's wisp of smoke permeates the air. And you get your warm clothing on, and go outside and walk in the silence of the winter, silence broken only by the small crunching noise of your steps in the snow and by the muffled thud of a bank of snow falling from a tree branch. The air is crisp and you feel it cleansing your lungs, and it brings on rosy cheeks and shiny eyes.

That is MY winter.

Oklahoma winter? A chill that barely goes down to freezing level - and that only after the temperature warms up enough to trick a few plants into thinking that the winter is over. Wind that blows dust everywhere and makes things look as desolate as a fallout movie. And the chance of getting an ice storm, that coats everything in one or two inches of ice, and kills trees. and maybe, just maybe, an inch or two of snow, once a winter or two or three, that halts everything in the city, makes everybody act like it's the end of the world, stops the power and makes everybody miserable.

But now, it's over. and even if spring in Oklahoma usually equates with supercell storms spawning tornado after tornado, one can't be unmoved by the revival of vegetation.

Of course, both me and the Wild Wolf have been busy - he's building fences and gates, and I'm making new flower beds, for the little seedlings that I have started inside to be transplanted to in two or three weeks. I've worked like crazy this past week, of course I popped pain-killers all day long, not just to be able to work in the garden but also because the weather was kind of "I'm going to be nice and warm, but I'm going to spawn some rain when you least expect it", so my poor body felt it in the surgery scars, in the joints, and in the nerve-damaged extremities. But still, I went on, and every night I had that "good sore" feeling before falling asleep, that soreness in the muscles that tells you that you have worked your body in a good way. A huge difference from the chronic pain I am used to.

Here's a bit of what we've done, but more was done since I took these photos a few days ago.