Alaskan winters seem to go on and on forever. I try to break up the six-month plus season with a trip 'Outside' for color, warmth, and sunshine. As you can see from the photo above, April is still a time of white and grays for us. That wee bit of green on the conifer is just a funky shade of gray to me. Sure, we now have over 14 hours of daylight, and the sun is creeping northward. The sun rises and sets in the east and west now instead of in the southeast and southwest, visible from the same south-facing window three months out of the year. The snow piles are shrinking, the snow cover on the ground evaporating. The soil below is dark brown, soggy, yet promising.
I envy, sort of, my friends' pictures posted on social media, showing off bushes loaded with rose blooms, while my recently released from cold storage potted plants are only beginning to green up, a few buds striving to photosynthesize sustenance from the fluorescent tubes above and limited sunlight, peeking through the north and east facing windows.
June, July, and August will get here eventually. They always do. As I said, I'm a realist. And the Pippy Longstockings attitude knows that while others are suffering from high heat and humidity, cockroaches and hornworms, water restrictions and drought, I'll rely on the evening rains and occasional breezes to take care of my plants and the air conditioning. And I'll snap as many pictures as I can, to look over through the long winter.
Summer always gets here.
And when it does, it's fabulous.
