Winter and my Discontent

This is not my favorite time of year. I like going outside every now and again. I like to look at the flowers or stroll through the forest preserve. (For my relatives in the UP, the forest preserve is the tiny piece of forest they didn't develop into suburbia. You'd just call it "the back yard.") I like to go outside and sit in a lawn chair and knit out in the sunshine and listen to the airplanes roaring overhead birds twittering in the trees.

I could live with the cold, really I could. If we had enough snow to do something with. There's not enough to ski on, there's not enough to ride a snowmobile on. And the sidewalks that didn't get shoveled after the last snow are now covered with ice making plain walking treacherous. There's just enough to be annoying and useless. Even though there's not much I am willing to be a good sport and box the whole mess up and send it on to one of the polar ice caps. I understand they're melting and I'd sure like to do my part to help out that situation.

So as I sit here bemoaning the sad state of weather affairs (it hasn't been above freezing in many, many days) I receive this in the mail:


Oh goodie. Tropical plants. Let me just go get comfortable and browse this baby over.

Gee, it looks like Husband put away all of the comfy chair cushions. I wonder why he'd do a thing like that. Now to decide where these lovely plants would look best in my garden. Maybe a little something over by the clematis?

Or maybe it would look better over by the asclepias?

Or perhaps this is just some kind of cosmic joke that played out in the Chicago suburbs today.

There is a glimmer of good news though. I have discovered that the Harlot will be in Madison on the day before my birthday. I have already spoken to Husband and arranged a little road trip. I have also arranged that Husband will be in charge of getting daughter off to school the next day, so I can have a bit of a lie in if I want to. True, I will have to wait for 2 more months, but at this point it's about all that's getting me through my days. That, and knitting lace.