They say this is one of the worst winters they’ve ever seen around here. Good, because if this is normal, I’m leaving ASAP! It seems like spring will never come.

We are all now resigned to the thought that we’ve now entered a new ice age. We are talking about the current snowpack as if it needs to have a glacial name and we are sure it will be here until July. We are sure that permafrost has taken over our lawn. The pasture is referred to as the tundra. We talk about how there’s nearly no hay left in the county to feed our livestock.

We peer anxiously into the sky watching the migrations of the Canadian and snow geese. There are so many more than normal. What are they harbingers of? What do they know that we don’t? Yet, they fly around and around and they don’t even seem to know which way to point the vee. We worry how much of the winter wheat they will eat and if there will be any left.

Yet, we look anxiously at the trees and note the amount of buds already formed and realize the trees are just waiting. We inspect the garden for hints of spring bulbs. We are almost sure the crocus will be up by this next Friday, surely.

The days have lengthened and the chickens are laying more and more eggs. They don’t seem to notice they’re still in the grip of the icy mother of all frozen winters. However, they’ve forgotten what bugs are for sure.

The grass hasn’t even pondered spring. Every time we walk across the dead, dormant, lifeless, monotone, beaten-down-by-months-of-ice-and-snow, muddied, torn up, ruined, there’s-no-way-it-will-ever-grow grass, we can’t even summon up the thought of a remembered spring. That stuff is a goner.

We are watching and waiting, but we aren’t sure it will come. We have almost given up hope. We are thinking we should start a snow cone business as a way of coping. Someone send help? We need Vitamin D and a bag of ice melt, at the very least.