Longing for Summer

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Winter is cold for me. So far I have not gotten around to posting about the reasons it is so, SO cold, but it is COLD. My house is cold. My house is actually cold in the summer which is not such a bad thing, but in the winter, most people think it is cold even when I turn the heat up… a lot.

So even though my house is cold, we have had a relatively mild winter. And also a relatively mild spring which means that the wind has not been as bad as it could be.

Spring is not my favorite season in New Mexico; in fact, it is my least favorite season. There is always wind. The defining things are how hard the wind blows and how often. This year there have been only a handful of really bad days, and it did not start early. But the problem this spring is that we have had some FABULOUS weather. It is sunny here most of the time, so that is nothing new, but we have had a lot of sunny and WARM (a week or two–not together) of mid-70’s or at least upper 60’s.

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Seventy degrees (Fahrenheit) is an optimal temperature for me whether it is sunny and dry (like here) or cloudy and humid (like my Missouri home). We have had plenty. But the windy days this spring have always brought “weather.” In an 8-day period we had rain three times.  THREE TIMES. This is the DESERT! This is SPRING! (Rain comes in isolated showers in the summer here.) OK, we need rain, so who am I to complain? But it was cold rain. And without sun, my freezing house is unbearable. (This might be a slight exaggeration since I am obviously still bearing it.)

Last week when my niece and nephew were here, our weather was perfect. Sunny every single day, and high 60’s – mid-70’s for temperatures. (Which did produce more than one mild sunburn.) Being a realist, I do not get my hopes up in March when it is warm. I have seen snow in April both in southern Missouri and here, so I know it can get cold again. But the older I get, the more those warm days take me into their arms and cuddle me. They lull me into a bliss so complete that little thoughts about spring and summer creep into my head. Maybe THIS year, we’ll have a long, warm spring. Just maybe. And during those seemingly kind days, the weather claims me as its own. There is no acclimation to it, only happiness to be in it.

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But she is tricky, that weather.  Reader, it is supposed to SNOW here tomorrow. Granted, spring snows are the kind that are either light, and it warms up in a few days, or the biggest snow of the season which will be entirely gone the next day, but still… This winter is the coldest I have kept my house. (The heat was ALL the way down.) When the days finally started getting at least 10 degrees warmer than the temperature in my house (54 in the warmest spot), my house would warm up. There were nights when I would go to bed and it was actually 73 degrees in the normally coldest part. (Which turns into the warmest part in summer, but who am I to quibble about that?)

So tomorrow it will be in the 20’s and snowing. My house will be 54 degrees again. I will have 4 shirts and a jacket on and fingerless gloves.  If I have to take something upstairs, I will eye my bed with longing. I will want to  climb in and take a warm nap. (Maybe read a little before I drift off to sleep.) But it will not be meant to be. I will plod along as usual in my freezing house and wait–not so patiently–for a few days to pass and it to be warm again.

I do not think it is necessarily the cold that bothers me so much (but in a house like mine, it does), but the teasing of the weather. I lived in Iceland for seven months once and wore my coat every. single. day of my time there. (Below freezing was considered very cold there, but we had a record-breaking winter for cold and snow.) It did not bother me at all.  The fact that I did not see the sun for days (and for months, when I did it was either rising or setting because that is all it did in the winter) did not bother me.  It was just the way things were, and I was used to it. But 70-something for five or six days in a row, then rain and cold, then SNOW… it is almost too much!

In the meantime, I will think about the sunflowers that will be around me in a couple of months. The photos here are from last summer. These sunflowers are called Lemon Queen and are in my neighbor’s yard. They grew as volunteers from seeds birds took from MY Lemon Queen sunflowers two years before. They are about 12 feet (4 m) tall. Maybe I will just print these out to cheer me up as the snow is falling outside. Maybe I will go to the garden center and buy some sunflower seeds. My car is always warm!