The big melt

Today the temperature in Madison is in the upper 40s. Now since I have been in Madison, I have been staying in an executive suite while looking for more permanent housing. Outside my living room is a small balcony where icicles have been forming from the roof line, some growing to the point where they are hanging down over four feet! Occasionally, I have been tempted to step outside and engage in a some icicle removal along the lines of how much impact could I make as a four foot icicle goes crashing down two stories. However, my concern for the safety of my downstairs neighbors and my not wanting to add to my probably growing reputation as a slightly eccentric New Yorker, I decided to let them continue to decorate my patio like ice bangs through which I have been looking past to the nature outside.

With the warm temperature, these icicles have been rapidly melting away revealing a landscape of shrinking mounds of snow and ice. I have yet to see grass since I have lived in Madison, and have made this known to everyone I have come to know hoping to hear that under all that tundra there lies a green carpet of lush lawn. But what I got instead was that once the snow melts away, what I will see is a soggy, matted, brown, muddy ground that merely adds to the bleakness of a very long winter. It is the final ugliness that makes the coming spring (alleged coming spring) more spectacular as the deadness of winter becomes this lush green spring when the burden of constant snow removal will become the burden of constant lawn mowing, and mowing and mowing.

I haven’t seen ground yet, and not sure if the snow will melt enough today to make that a reality. Temperatures will cool down again and more snow is forecast for the week (yes, more snow taking Madison far beyond the record!). So, probably it will still be awhile before the earth emerges as ugly as it may be. I have given up anticipating the milder promise of spring even as an official spring is coming upon us in about three weeks. So, for now I will have to create a virtual spring that will live in my imagination. Maybe not reality, but at least I won’t have to mow it!