Monday, April 01, 2013

Spring is jumping around all over the place.  Now our Spring is not like your spring.  Blue skies and sunshine looks pretty springy, but the melting is just getting started.  When the roads start to look like a Slushee dumped out of the cup, Spring is on the way, and today that’s what the roads looked like.  Of course at night, all that slush freezes and, while the drivers haven’t yet gotten their summer-time lobotomy and can still drive on frozen roads, some are over-eager and slide through the  intersections like they are on hockey skates.  Unfortunately the goalie is another car and the result looks more like high-dollar bumper cars at Knots Berry Farm.  The beginning of winter is a peculiar time for the drivers because the lobotomy hasn’t worn off until after a few close calls.  Every snow storm until December has the highway littered with ditch-divers and the tow trucks work round-the-clock.  This is the end of winter, however, and the crunch-incidence is a little lower.  April and October are really the ugly months in Alaska.  In April, there are no leaves on the trees and the beautiful snow becomes not-so-beautiful slush and mud.  By October, the leaves are gone and everything looks pretty dead until the beautiful snow starts to stick.  The leaves start to pop the second week in May, and then the pretty starts.  Planting a garden until the first of June is a bit of a waste.  The plants just sit there waiting for warmth so they can start to grow, but when they finally do, the long days make them grow quickly.  Tough lessons for a raised-up desert rat like me, but this year in Alaska makes 20, so I guess I have lived here longer than I lived in Arizona.  Sobering.