Whither Spring?

I’m hiding in my basement. The woodstove is cooking up a storm, and we are baking bread to warm up the main living space of the house. April is a hard month around here.(1) It rains. And it rains. And it rains some more. The wood pile is depleted so we are on heat rationing. All the local food is gone; even this week’s carrots came from cold storage in another part of the world. The fruit is long-past except for some mealy apples. I converted to frozen veggies about 2 weeks ago, and will mostly make do with those for the next few weeks.

My mother called from South Virginia last evening, flying north with the other Canadian snow birds. I asked her whether they had to drive their RV’s in a v-formation. She told me that it was strawberry season, and I whimpered. Strawberries? I remember those. I was just about to ask the internet whether it was safe to uncover them 6 weeks before our frost date. Sigh.

But the pipe bender arrived, and the plans are unfolding. We will be building a version of this greenhouse at Maximum Yield, with some additional features of these dome houses, like raised beds and piping under the soil. Someday I hope to purchase one of the REALLY LARGE versions of those, and then I’ll move inside my greenhouse in a yurt. Oh, that would be the life, on a day like today. I imagine a green paradise. Warmth in January. Tropical fruits of my very own. I can give up my dreams of being a library-bound cat-lady and become a greenhouse-hippie lady instead. Don’t tell me how hot it would be in the summer, or that all my books would mold. Just grant me this dream of perpetual spring and summer, trapped as I am beneath ground to avoid our perpetual rain.

1. T.S. Eliot tells me that it’s the cruellest, but I don’t really understand The Wasteland. Perhaps I’ll give it another go, unless one of my English professor friends wishes to enlighten me over a beer. I’ve got Mira homebrew.