Two Views Of My Yard: Two Months Ago And Today

I just did this conparison on Facebook, but Facebook crops photos oddly. So I'll do it again on a blog post:

Which do you like better. The view of my backyard on March 24 or today?

Click on the images to make them bigger and easier to see.

Weather Changing Every Minute in Vermont, as usual.

The two photographs in this post were taken in downtown Burlington, Vermont Sunday morning, just 10 minutes apart. The first one shows a fairly heavy snow falling, and in the second, the sky is totally, completely clear.

Just another day in a Vermont winter/early spring.



The contrasts between years are extreme and bizarre, too. On this week last year, we had an incredible, unprecedented early heat wave, in which temperatures soared into the 70s and 80s for a full week, shattering records highs  by as many as 20 degrees.

This year, it was below zero in many Vermont communities this morning, and a large snowstorm is expected tomorrow. No early spring this year.

I guess you just have to like the variety. You can't do anything else. Last year I fretted about everything in the garden blooming too soon, only to get nailed by frost later. This year, I'm despairing at ever seeing green in my garden.  There's no happy medium.

So you roll with punches. Last year, I scrambled to find my summer clothes while it was still winter. This year, I haven't given shorts and t-shirts a second thought.

Maybe I should just stop listening to weather forecasts and let every day be a surprise. Even with the forecasts in hand, it seems like every day is a surprise anyway.

Gloomy Weather Can Be Beautiful

Here in Vermont, we've been stuck in one of those end of winter weather funks, where it stays damp, cloudy and gloomy. Some wet snow splats down from time to time, or some cold raindrops. The sky is always gray and fog waxes and wanes, obsuring the landscape one minute, partially revealing it another.


It thaws a little during the day, and the meltwater sort of hangs in the air as mist. At night, it gets colder and a bit of slushy or icy snow greets us each morning. The brief daytime thaws have left bare brown patches here in there in the ragged carpet of dirty, thin, soggy snow.

The mild weather, at least compared to the heart of winter, rouses the skunks, who spray randomly or get hit by cars  as they wander in their groggy, sleepy stupor. The acrid smell of skunk hangs in the foggy air, so what we have is a bit of a skunk smog.

All this, of course,  is a sign of spring, that winter is losing its grip. This makes most of us happy but the gloomy air seems designed to contain our excitement about the change of season, so we don't get excerssivelly excited about it.



There's certainly a beauty in the mist, the clouds, the thawing snow, the mud underfoot, as you can see by the photographs I took in Burlington, Vermont this week that are in this post.

 Everything looks mysterious. It's as if spring knows it wants to put on its bright, green gaudy show, but what's to keep everything under wraps in the mist, so we don't get ahead of ourselves and embrace spring before it's time to do so.

Autumn Progression in Vermont

During lunchtime during my workdays in Burlington, Vermont, I like to take a brief walk to clear my  head.

I pass by the same spot each time, and decided to whip out my iPhone every few days and document how autumn was passing, using one particular tree.

None of the photos are outstandingly artistic, to be honest, but putting them togther, it's fun to see the changes: