I am looking out at my landscape, IN Maine, with very little snow. This while the Washington DC area and the whole mid Atlantic coast is being pummeled by the white stuff.
Wow. Usually my friend Lynn, who moved to Virginia 12 years or so ago, is calling me up and taunting me about her good weather. Not this year. I think that she is about to get even more snow down there. She has lost the top of her beautiful magnolia and is apparently out there at all hours of the day and night, like a mad woman, with a broom, knocking the snow off the branches of her surprised shrubs. Now, Lynn is a very funny woman and the picture that I conjure up in my head has me just laughing.
Do you have a friend who you can talk endlessly to about the passions in your life? I can't think of a greater gift. Lynn worked here on the farm for years. Mostly when her son was very little. Now he's 25. So there is some history here.
But she and I have been talking plant trash for all these years. I always know that I can call her and yak about conifers or shrubs or trees. You name it. We talk about other things as well but the plant conversations....well,we can spend hours on the phone just talking about things that grow.
We sit with books on our laps.... talking. Looking things up that one of us hasn't heard about, comparing notes and making comments like, "I ripped all those out last year....just couldn't stand them anymore!" and tips like...."Just get the 'saws all', that's how I've started dividing grasses"
And so...this day when the February temperature is around 37 and things are looking spring like (although don't think for one minute that I believe that)I really think that you should move back to Maine, Lynn. Where we don't get nearly the storms that you get in Virginia. And even if we do, we have snowplows.