Leatherstocking Tales

Waiting for Spring

It's winter again today.  Three inches on the ground and it's still coming down.  Makes up for our 50 degree Saturday morning.  The kids are not enjoying this like I thought they would.  They are ready for everything to melt and spring to come.  What scares me (well, it doesn't really scare me, but it's food for thought) is that this is a warm winter.  What are they going to think next year if we have a real winter?

(Also, I wonder what happened to those new fern fiddleheads we saw pushing up through the leaf litter this weekend.)

In the snow, everything is waiting, like we are waiting.  The kids get impatient with it, and I do, too, but it's a good thing, really.  We need time to think through spring and summer and fall in advance.  Seems like maybe gardening will help bolster my organizational skills, as well as my self-discipline.  Discipline sounds like such a scary word, especially when applied to gardening.  It sounds like sticks and rulers.  There's got to be a better word for keeping at something when it gets hard just because you have a goal in mind and you enjoy your work most days. 

Maybe it would be better to call it persistence.  Diligence.  Something virtuous and high-minded.

Or maybe that's just putting on airs.