Winter hangs on…

When will it end? It’s time for blossoms and bees and new shoots on the trees. This morning when I went over to feed the two old horses, I decided to return to the house the long way. I walked up the road past a flatbed trailer and noticed that the surface had a peculiar sparkle to it. ICE! It was covered with frost! In mid-April! What’s going on here?! For the past day it’s been raining, and over roughly a 24-hour period we got 1.8" (46mm) which came mostly by drizzle punctuated with downright scary downpours. At one point the water coming off the roof where there is no rain gutter made it difficult to see the valley to the south. A thunderstorm late yesterday afternoon pelted the blossoms and tender new leaves with sheets of hail. It’s tough being a tree in weather like this. If I had been braver and willing to get soaked (and risk wasting a nice camera by drenching it), I could have taken pictures of gopher holes down the hill gushing water. I watched, hoping to catch sight of a thoroughly soaked gopher popping out, but no luck. Oh well, at least it didn’t snow.