I am accustomed to suffering winter for long periods of time. Or accustomed to not even having winter at all. That's because I lived in the Minneapolis suburbs until I was 9, and then our family moved to lovely Mesa, Arizona. When I was 18, I journeyed back to Minnesota for college and spent the next four years living a truly upside-down existence with my winters in frigid St. Paul (not recommended) and my summers in the boiling Arizona desert (also not recommended). Shortly after that, I moved to Chicago, where you poor folks are once again in the grip of subzero temperatures after a winter that has been, I hear, one of the worst in recent memory.
I also spent short stints in Spain and Washington, D.C., both of which places unrolled particularly nasty weather for me. Perhaps because of these experiences, I love talking about the weather. It's not a cliche to me, but a fascinating subject, and I think most native Minnesotans and Chicagoans would agree with me.
But now I am in England and I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that spring is getting close! Yes, it's true. While it had been raining for days when I wrote my Nottingham travel story, I am currently sitting in a patch of warm sunlight pouring in through the window at the top of the stairs. It's the third day of lovely warm, sunny pleasantness with still more to come.
Granted, it still gets pretty chilly at night. And when I pull back the heavy drapes on my second-story windows each morning, I look out upon a garden lawn that's frosted silver. The last few days, morning mists have gathered over the canal and River Trent before the rising sun burns them off.
But the snowdrops started pushing up last month and have now burst into flower all over the yard. Daffodil stalks are climbing higher and higher around the base of the apple tree in the garden, and I often cycle pass a yard with a tantalizingly sweet, floral scent, though I've not yet determined which early-blooming plant is producing it.
Of course the newspapers are filled with stories about climate change, and about how the snowdrops and other first flowers have been appearing earlier and earlier in England. But when I ask my friends when spring normally arrives in Nottingham, they say, "Usually around the end of February or early March."
I find this concept incredible! So this is what it's like to live in a place where winter actually is a three-month season, not a cross to be borne for weary month upon weary month. I actually really enjoy most winter weather--up until February. Then I'm done and suffer as silently as possible until April or May. Spring in February or March, however ... well, I could get used to this!
I suppose as soon as I post this the sun will go behind some fast-appearing clouds and it will begin to rain for days on end again, just to prove me wrong. But I will not be daunted. I have glimpsed spring, and it's coming quickly.
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