Spring Has Sprung

Well, I think it is almost safe to say that spring is here. The days are getting longer. Temperatures are going up and the sun is shining. The four feet of snow that was in my yard is now down to a few patches dirty white hold outs, and my canoe is calling to the calm waters of the river in front of my house. The only problem is that the retreating snow pack is revealing my shortcomings of last fall.

It is an exciting time, the spring. Ever since I was a kid I loved the challenge of what I now call 'tactical hydrological engineering'. Trying to find ways to efficiently remove the water from the melting snow cover from my property without washing out my driveway or ending up with an indoor pool in the basement. When it comes down to it I guess it is basically playing in puddles. But let's not split hairs here. Let's just agree that the former sounds more grown up than the latter and leave it at that. Spring is also the time when the kids miraculously 'discover' where that toy went, that they just had to have last January, and was nowhere to be found in the house. There it is, half frozen in ice like some kind of prehistoric mammoth, revealed by global warming. Unfortunately, spring is also the time of year when my lack of enthusiasm for raking leaves comes into full view.

I guess I just hope that somehow with the beginning of winter that the yard pixies or the forest dryads or whatever, will decide that they just have to have all the leaves covering my yard and will use the cover of snow to remove all the detritus of the fall. Then when the snow melts, I will have no raking to do. The grass will green up and I can enjoy the summer. Well, sad to say, no such luck yet. The snow is now almost all gone and there are the leaves, mocking me from almost the same locations that I last saw them in before the snow came. The Horror! THE HORROR!

Depressingly, I have no other choice than to buckle down and begin the hated act of raking. On the bright side, the only thing that could be worse than having to go out and rake the yard, would be heading to the garage to tune up the snow blower in preparation for a snowstorm.