I've always loved spring, when I no longer have to don a coat, scarf and gloves to go outside. No more scraping thick layers of ice off the windshield, car doors frozen shut (or the latch frozen so it will not shut after opening). Sitting outside on the front porch plucking away at notes on my guitar or banjo while sipping on a cold adult beverage. Although this spring the little one is determined that I should only practice the violin so we can practice together, but hey it's music and fun.
I hate spring, all the road construction, detours and the traffic problems those cause. The Mississippi river is out of its banks again, flooding all the low lands and roads near it causing even more road closings and detours (adding more than twice the distance back and forth to work every day for me.) This year the flooding has set a record for most days above flood stage... the water level did start going down last week but the news reports it's suppose to come back up next week, even higher than it was before!
Last week or the week before some guy walking down the flooded street about 4 or 5 blocks from my office "Noodled" a huge catfish that was swimming along a flooded street in downtown Davenport Iowa. It's been on the news and you tube.
I live on the river, well about 100 yards from it, make that about 75 yards right now but it was closer to 50 yards last week. Any closer I should be able to go fishing without leaving my front porch!
Yes I love/hate spring :)
Comments
Wish
I'd only wish that the water would visit us with 99% of my state and the rest in drought. Climate change is well demonstrated here.
Hopefully, autumn will bring rain so farmers can plant a winter crop.Many were unable plant through summer due to lack of water.
farming woes
While I had never seen the large commercial farms until I moved to this area, my family did have a rather large vegetable garden (about 1.5 acres) and also raised our own hogs and chickens. It was a lot of long hours and sweaty work as a teen. It did have it's benefits as I had my own horse, a beautiful buckskin quarter-horse that tended to act more like a giant dog always wanting to follow me around (He got loose one day and walked all the way to the high school to find me)
But without getting sidetracked further, it seems all we ever see on the news it how farmers are not seeing enough rain, or there is too much rain. One thing about life is it is always changing, every living breathing thing changes, people, animals and plants grow older, have offspring and eventually die in the cycle of life.
The Earth also changes, although at a much slower rate so it could be thought of as a living breathing creature with a much longer lifespan. Climate change is nothing more than the cycle of life of our planet. The Earth has went through periods of extreme heat to extreme cold, the Sahara desert at one time was forested, the Mississippi valley region of North America was once a shallow sea. If the climate never changed then the Earth would still be filled with excessive volcanic activity and a poisonous atmosphere.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
history repeating itself
Farmers nowadays complaining about drought ought to look at what droughts used to be and wouldn't have much to complain about...need only look at the Dust Bowl years to see just how nasty a drought can really be without irrigation and using aquifers properly. Overtapping aquifers has been a huge problem for farming, as is the flooding that impacts the regions(I'm sure you know this well). The cycle of oversaturation and drought happens frequently, if folks looked beyond the past decades and actually noticed the patterns they'd see that it happens differently than the numbers show and the worst years come and go and sadly the most recent years have been in the high point making the drought seem worse than it could have been.
And quiet on the ice age talk, climate change fanatics get in an uproar when you make mention of them as they are what normally make the arguments about blaming humans for everything moot. Without volcanic activity, uncontrolled forest fires, and evidence that drastic changes in weather systems across the globe happening when humans were unable to impact events they get personal and attack you.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
Seasons
Around my area we joke or complain that our seasons are winter, almost construction, construction, still construction and then repeats the cycle. Many times the only good thing about winter is the snow and ice fill in the potholes. Sometimes when watching a car drive by we wonder if the driver is drunk or just dodging the potholes.
New Englander?
New Englander?
The local cities and towns aren't bothering to fix potholes until the weather is guaranteed to stay above freezing each night so the potholes are actually able to be fixed without their work being undone overnight due to freezing. We are starting to get nasty around Boston with the potholes, but they could be a lot worse as we haven't had much rain except for the past week. It's annoying, but the alternative is re-patching multiple holes. The cost of a potential lawsuit is less than the cost to send a crew out to fix a problem that won't actually be fixed after they finish filling the hole.
I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime
NEPA
North Eastern PennsylvaniA, the land of the highest gasoline tax and very bad roads. On top of winter weather, the stone quarry haulers and natural gas industry trucks make for bad conditions.
The road
in front of my place was like that for several years with those of us that live here welcoming the sub zero winter weather as the ice and packed snow would fill up the holes. The town finally repaved it a couple years ago :)
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Spring
Where I live, spring is the nicest day of the year. We had ours three weeks ago. After that, winter returned. Winter will at some point stop, and turn into summer. (Current temperature is 25°F.)