Dramatic Skies

photo sequence: clearing late winter storm, an afternoon in March, southern Wisconsin

March (and sometimes April) is hard in the Great Lakes/Great Plains region, because of the waiting: it’s a time between late winter and true spring, when one is constantly teased by warming weather then tumbled back into cabin fever when good weather is taken away again. It’s sunny and warm one day, but the next it could be cold, rainy, windy, and wintry yet again. The garden is green one morning, white the next.



It’s been a year of intense changes in my personal life: a lot of heavy internal weather. Only a year ago I bought my new home; I haven’t lived here a full year as yet. I don’t even have a full year’s occupancy, because I traveled for so many weeks last summer and autumn. As I will again this spring and fall, if I can.



I’ve been feeling incredibly cooped up and burdened with restlessness. I know I’m on edge about life, but also about the turn of the year. I’ve been cold for months; now I relish being warm again, warm all the way through to my aching bones.



The bulbs I planted last fall are beginning to emerge from beneath the soil, mulch, or carpet of leaves. By month’s end some will already have bloomed, and be fading. Spring comes quickly, when it chooses at last to arrive. The garden is white one morning, green the next.