Dear Winter, Don't leave yet.

There is a lightness to the world outside my windows today. Yes, it is the sun- a rarely felt item in Ohio's winter and a lure to lie in a patch of it and enjoy the sensation of warmth. But, also it is a irritation, an itch you can't scratch, a need that can't be filled by food or exercise or thought. It is a waiting.

The crusts of snow still lie on the banks of the creek and the north side of the hills. The ice is finally gone on the patios and outdoor stairs, the way clear to the barn, one stubborn hillock of ice keeping the barn gate from fully opening. Distressingly, my Muck Boots are leaking. As a child, my mother would save bread bags. When winter rolled around, our gloriously inadequate 70's winter boots were yanked onto little feet only after application of a bread bag. 40 years later, and bread bags are again lining my boots for the squidgy trudge to the barn. I know it is the threat of spring that is making me antsy.

Threat. Indeed, for that is what it is. I know spring is hope and rebirth, and my promised start of the new year of seasons on March 26. But, spring is also shearing and fence building and garden prep and planting and weeding, and field maintenance and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, and conditioning of the horses, and arrival of the calves and raking the stones back onto the driveway displaced by the plow and burning the asparagus patch and spraying the orchard and mulching all the flower beds and moving the manure piles and finding the blueberries and current bush in the raspberry overgrowth. Spring is painting fences and re-siding the tractor shedrow and finding a jumping horse for middlest and planting the seedlings and getting the east side of the barn regraded and the slates fixed and replacing the door on the poultry run that the sheep broke down and then got iced in place.  Spring means figuring out how to keep the gander in the poultry yard so he doesn't eat every tender spring shoot in the gardens, and getting the kids to keep the fair projects in hand and raising chicks in the mudroom and building a better duck house so duck slaughter is not repeated. But spring does not mean an end to the myriad lessons, the multiple weekly meetings and work.

So, thank you God for the hard frost this morning. Let me keep winter for a bit longer....