Late But Worthy of Note
OK, so last week Tuesday we had summer. It was 79F and sunny. Saturday and Sunday it snowed and snowed, though it was very lovely snow if you did not have to drive. It was even easy to clean off the car… sticky, melty and warm, as snow goes anyway. 
I should not have been surprised. I can not remember an April without at least a few flakes. Some of the biggest blizzards come this late in the season. But wowie, that was so incredibly out of the blue!
Here is a photo of our spring garden under the mailbox, on Sunday, followed by a photo of our spring garden under the mailbox, on Monday. Also see our neighbor’s house. A forsythia bush, harbinger of true spring, plus a flowering bush on right (pink flowers center right of photo) and some red tulips (bottom right) are surrounded by snow. Go figure.
I could not help but think of a scene in the “Chronicles of Narnia” (a series of seven books for pre-teens, by CS Lewis). In the book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” the land has been always winter and never spring for years, under the spell of the white witch. When she dies, the heroes are walking through the woods and they can see things turn to spring before their eyes. All the snow melts in a matter of hours, and those using sleds for transportation (the bad guys, of course) can no longer move swiftly, and eventually can not move at all.
So Monday as I left to meet Tony for lunch, there were several-inch piles of snow in most of the shady spots. At the same time, sunny spots were green, the birds were chirping, I didn’t need to button my coat, the sun was shining, and all I could figure was that the white witch was dead.
The Narnia stories are lovely, really. The heros/heroines are children who do real life things that aren’t always pretty, but they are quite real. Some things are messy in the physical sense, some bad choices have consequences. More real than many stories for this age group, never mind the parts about talking animals and magical happenings.
I’m sad that the bad guys in this series sometimes have dark hair and turbans, and the good guys are basically nordic. However, it was written in the 1950s and was a product of that time. The underlying stories and values are wonderful, not preachy at all, and although Mr. Lewis was a writer of Christian philosophy for adults as well, it doesn’t come across as specifically Christian at all. I am sure these books influenced my own personal theology in a good way.
My godparents gave me these books when I was 13 years old and I devoured them. In fact, I wore out that first set of paperbacks during my college years, and bought a second set. I still read them on occasion… at about 140 pages each, they can be read in one evening after work, while sitting happily on my heat vent. Adventure, but in a neat nutshell.
Hey, ho, the witch is dead! The nice weather seems to be sticking around here this time, and I’m really loving it.