I’m gazing out over a winter backyard, where finally patches of green are poking through…the first indication that snow might actually go before June. I like snow, don’t misunderstand, but not snow that shows up like a poor relation and doesn’t know when to leave.

This has been such a snow year…overstaying its welcome. My kind of snow comes in the late afternoon, stays for dinner and an overnight in the guest bedroom and then leaves for the airport in the morning. That’s fine. It shows us its best, doesn’t become monotonous, reinforces why we live where the seasons change. But, hey, this snow came in late December and then invited three blizzards of relations to come for a jamboree and took us out of our rythme of ‘snow and thaw’.

But now there is still mounded, street-side snow that has been street-water splashed for two months and is as dirty as coal. Whatever was pristine and virginal is now trashy and should be too embarrassed to stick around. This isn’t Buffalo, you know, where new snow, contractually, covers the old, regularly…and where, evidently, they like it.