Does this look like Spring to you?

So, all the catalogues and magazines have their Spring issues out already. Decorate for Spring! Fashions for Spring! Get ready for Spring Cleaning!

Why are they shoving Spring down our throats? I know most people have had quite enough of winter and are just aching for Spring to arrive, but I, for one, am simply not ready. It feels, to me, as if Winter is just getting started. But then, I love Winter. I love bitingly cold air, frosty winds, thick, woolen scarves and sweaters, downy quilts, snowy landscapes and steaming mugs of strong tea.

We haven't had a good snow storm yet and we can usually count on at least one each year. Maybe that's why it hasn't felt like a proper season yet. We're supposed to get some snow today, but the baby-faced weatherman was very non-committal and only said, "Perhaps an inch or so South and East of the city," meaning, "I'm not really sure who's going to get what, so this way you can't make angry calls to the studio complaining that I don't deserve my paycheck"! That or he KNOWS we're going to get a few inches and doesn't want to throw the entire region into the kind of frenzied panic that always erupts if more than a half-inch of snow lays on the ground. I don't understand that, either. This is New Jersey. I know it's not Minnesota, or Buffalo, where they're quite used to feet of snow on a regular basis, but it's not Miami either. We get snow each year and we should know how to handle it by now. It's Winter, people! It's going to snow! Get over it or move South!

Sorry, I have gotten myself under control.

So, with all the catalogues that come to the house and the magazines I pick up at the grocery store being all broken out in Spring-fever, I'm sadly short of reading material. I'm just not ready for them. Come the beginning of March, I'll be ready. I'll smell the coming Spring in the air and I'll turn my thoughts to warmer weather and longer days.

But for now, I'm happy in my cosy Winter nest, sipping tea with my slippers on and waiting for the snow flakes to fall, hoping for many days of this: