Spring or Winter?

Usually this all happens later in March and it's warmer. The typical pattern is to get a few glorious springtime days, birds chirping, tulips and daffodils blooming, followed by a rain storm that makes everyone grumpy that spring disappeared. Well, this year, that all started in late February. Just as we're sick and tired of winter, we get a snowfall that dumped several inches in town, and a lot more in the hills. But when that melts, it feels like spring! A few warm days, my flowers are about to bloom, there's blue sky!

Then this morning it snowed again. It was just starting to snow when I left the house, around 6:15. Down at the ferry, I just got a light dusting, enough to make everything pretty. The roads had snow on them, and I could see that I was the first car since the night before to drive those 5 miles from the highway to the boat. I love that. A coworker came down around 10 and said that 2 inches had quickly dumped on downtown Salem. By that point, the snow was all melted here, it was hard to believe it snowed so hard there. Then, after it got super sunny with puffy cotton candy clouds, it started to hail! It sounded like there was bacon frying on the roof of the cabin.

Such weird weather. I guess this is the "lion" end of March, and there'll be a "lamb" by the end of the month? Sure hope so.

I got the coolest app ever for my ipad. It's the entire Sibley Bird book, and is amazingly searchable. So, for instance, to identify one bird, I looked for birds local to oregon, that were mostly black in color, water birds, and about the size of a duck. And it's a coot! I've never heard of coots before, and thought these were some sort of duck. It's awesome. I now also know that I have merganser ducks and kingfishers, not bluejays.

Even though the weather is bi-polar, there are slight hints of spring every day. The leaves haven't come out on the trees, but the branches and buds are turning color. The cottonwoods, from a distance, have red branches. And there's a short bushy tree by the ferry that has brilliant gold branches. It really is amazing to watch, day by day, as the birds and trees and plants all stretch their arms, take a deep breath, and prepare for the season.

I'm going on vacation on Thursday! A friend and I are flying to Phoenix for a mutual friend's wedding. While we're there, we'll meet up with two other mutual friends, one who just happens to randomly be road tripping through town. These are all my "invisible internet" friends, as SOME people like to call them. It's going to be fantastic. After the wedding, my travel buddy and I are going to road trip a bit, probably exploring a bit of northern Arizona and New Mexico. The best part? It's going to be sunny and 80 degrees. YEEEEHAW! Plus, I come home on Monday evening, and I took the rest of the week off, so I don't have to work until the following Sunday. That's a total of 10 days off, by only take vacation days for 4 days. I love that part of this job.