It’s March! February is gone at last! Not that it will make much of a difference for a while. February ended dismally with cold, snow, and the additional bother of a bad head cold for me. I’m glad to see the month gone. March hasn’t been any better so far. We’re supposed to get more snow tonight. But by the end of March we should see some definite signs that winter is leaving. I hope.
Since our return from our trip to Italy, I have been in a funk. The whole experience seems more and more like a dream to me. The reality of my life seems a bit harsher. It seems like the weather since our return has been maliciously cruel, punishing us with snow and icy winds. The wind was so fierce last Sunday and Monday that it shook the house at times and blew down branches and pine needles all over the yard. On Monday, the wind combined with the snow had me driving through white-outs going to and from school. I think we had snow fall every day last week. There’s almost a foot of it on the ground. I’m ready to see it gone. I keep having to remind myself that under all that frozen whiteness there are crocuses and snowdrops waiting to bloom.
Since our return from our trip to Italy, I have been in a funk. The whole experience seems more and more like a dream to me. The reality of my life seems a bit harsher. It seems like the weather since our return has been maliciously cruel, punishing us with snow and icy winds. The wind was so fierce last Sunday and Monday that it shook the house at times and blew down branches and pine needles all over the yard. On Monday, the wind combined with the snow had me driving through white-outs going to and from school. I think we had snow fall every day last week. There’s almost a foot of it on the ground. I’m ready to see it gone. I keep having to remind myself that under all that frozen whiteness there are crocuses and snowdrops waiting to bloom.
After we got home from our trip, I re-read a book I first read twenty or more years ago on the Medici, the family that ruled Florence during the Renaissance. The book is The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall by Christopher Hibbert. It’s a very readable history of a remarkable family and a remarkable time. I should have read it before we went. I would have had an even greater appreciation for the things we saw there. After reading it, I’ve added more items on the list of places to see the next time we go. I don’t know when that will be. Not too long I hope.
We talk now, in a half joking, half serious way of living in Tuscany. We daydream about living in a villa with olive and citrus trees and a view of the Tuscan hills. We’ve even looked online at properties for sale there – most of them fabulously expensive. It’s fun in a tormenting sort of way. I’ve reminded everyone that for many years we did live in a place where olive and citrus trees grew and we left there as soon as a blessed opportunity presented itself. But that was Los Angeles, not Tuscany, and there really isn’t much else to compare between them. I’ve told them that I could grow olives and citrus fruit here if I had a greenhouse. It is the discontent of winter that makes us long for another place. It will diminish when spring comes.
I placed the first of my seed orders last week. New seeds should be arriving in the mail this week. And I started organizing my planting schedule, arranging the order for starting my seed trays upstairs. That helped to alleviate my winter weariness a bit. And my clivias are in full bloom and my Christmas cacti have decided to bloom again. I think they are attuned to my mental state and have responded by bringing me flowers.
We talk now, in a half joking, half serious way of living in Tuscany. We daydream about living in a villa with olive and citrus trees and a view of the Tuscan hills. We’ve even looked online at properties for sale there – most of them fabulously expensive. It’s fun in a tormenting sort of way. I’ve reminded everyone that for many years we did live in a place where olive and citrus trees grew and we left there as soon as a blessed opportunity presented itself. But that was Los Angeles, not Tuscany, and there really isn’t much else to compare between them. I’ve told them that I could grow olives and citrus fruit here if I had a greenhouse. It is the discontent of winter that makes us long for another place. It will diminish when spring comes.
I placed the first of my seed orders last week. New seeds should be arriving in the mail this week. And I started organizing my planting schedule, arranging the order for starting my seed trays upstairs. That helped to alleviate my winter weariness a bit. And my clivias are in full bloom and my Christmas cacti have decided to bloom again. I think they are attuned to my mental state and have responded by bringing me flowers.
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| Flowers to cheer me. |
Our computer gave us another scare last week. It has been crashing repeatedly for several weeks. Josiah, working long distance with Geoffrey, tried various things to fix it. It seemed to be fixed at one point and then it got worse. Last week we were sure it was finished. It kept crashing and it would take five or six tries to get to start again and after an hour it would crash again. But then on Thursday they found the problem and corrected it. I don’t pretend to understand it. Apparently it was a bad stick of RAM (whatever that means) that was causing all the trouble. The bad RAM was removed (I picture a recalcitrant sheep digging in his heels as he’s being dragged off) and will be replaced. I hope this is the end of our troubles.
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| This is not the RAM that caused the problems. |
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| This is the RAM. |
Today is Fast Sunday. We are home from church and we’re hungry. We’re having one of those quick-to-prepare lunches – grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup – the perfect way to break our fast on a cold Sabbath. Grilled cheese sandwiches have been a favorite meal of mine since childhood. I like to make them and I love to eat them. It’s one of two meals you’ll get when you put me in charge of dinner (the other being omelets). After lunch I foresee a short Sabbath nap followed by an afternoon and evening in a warm and cozy house while we wait for the snow. I just checked and it’s 61° and sunny in Florence today. I need to stop doing that.
