Between Winter and Spring

March 10, 2017 and here in south central Pennsylvania it is snowing. More peculiar than that is the fact that yesterday we had a clear blue sky, brilliant sunshine and a high of sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit. I went to bed last night with a window partially open listening to the peepers at the pond and woke to the flutter of falling snow. Within less than eighteen hours the temperature dropped thirty degrees and the ground is covered with snow.

Have you ever heard of the 'onion snow?' Around here, it is not really considered Spring until after the onion grass starts growing. Why? Because there is almost always one last snow sometime in April after the onion grass grows. It's aptly named, Onion Snow. I like to tell people we have five seasons in Pennsylvania: spring, summer, fall, winter, and mud. Welcome to the mud season around here.

The thing is, if I wanted to put yesterday and today into a novel, I might be discouraged. I've been told many times over fiction must be both possible and believable. Around here, we expect the changeable weather, presence of five not four seasons, the humidity of our summers and extreme cold or crazy mild of winter, and forecasters who are frequently clueless. But, for those not from around here, these weather patterns are hard to believe.

Are you reading a book right now with some rather unbelievable situations? Before you toss the book, remember reality is often hard to fathom. After all, I just walked outside and took photos of my forsythia blooming in the snow!