If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

On this shortest day of the year, I lay in bed watching a blizzard blanket Hawthorne Street of Syracuse, wondering at what point do I begin the shoveling. You clear the sidewalk at the end of the storm, not in the middle. I've shoveled more snow in the past month than I have in the previous 10 years combined, even having lived in the northeast that whole time.

We'll get exactly 9 hours of sunlight today. Not including the dim visibility of dawn and dusk, we'll have 9 hours for outdoor daylight activities. Our schedules have adapted so they don't rely on the sun to tell us when to wake up and when to go to sleep. But my poor indoor plants that I move around the house to get as much light as possible will be starved today with only 9 hours to feed them.

They don't like this frigid cold either. Syracuse lies just southeast of Lake Ontario, and winds from the northwest bring cold Canadian air across the lake, picking up its water, and dumping it in snow form in the Onondaga Valley. We average about 12 feet of snow each season and just below the freezing point for well over the next month. Tonight those winds are supposed to reach gusts of 50 mph.

When Percy Shelly wrote his Ode to the West Wind he was embracing seasonal changes.

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!"

We loved our open air farmer's markets of October and November; choosing between 8 varieties of local tomatoes rocks! But on this first day of winter, I'm looking forward to pulling on my winter boots and gloves. I can't wait to get a really good snow tube to try out in Thornden Park.

I'm also excited about the return of the sun, as on Thursday my plants will have 1 more minute of light than they do today.

Happy Winter Solstice everyone!