Six inches

This is one of the photographs that hangs in my dark basement cube.

Now when I say I work in a dark basement cube, I'm not kidding. I'm in the basement of one of the state buidings, and there are two windows, both of which are set far below ground level. Sometimes, I walk over to the windows (both located in other people's cubes) and look up at what the weather might be doing. On occasion, one can tell whether it's sunny or precipitating, but not much more than that.

I took this photograph last spring in the park near our house. It's a blooming crabapple tree, one of the beautiful reminders of what spring truly is here in Colorado - after a winter of gray and black and white and stark and colorless, the world erupts in green and pink and yellow and purple, color suddenly everywhere. Spring doesn't last long, at least, not what you might think of as spring - the hot weather usually starts mid-May. But for those few short weeks of spring, I rejoice in the green and the flowers and the color everywhere, while also enjoying the sun on my (sunscreened, of course, I wear it all year) face - come summer, I wear a hat to further help shield my skin from the sun, a mile closer than where I grew up.

Through the fall and winter, as the days get shorter and the nights get longer, working in the dark basement cube can be kind of debilitating. I have to make sure I get outside at least once a day for a minute or two to take advantage of any sun there might be. This winter, there was very little until a few weeks ago, and then suddenly it was in the 60s and 70s, spring before the trees and flowers were ready for it to be spring. The photograph in my cube is a burst of color on the dark gray fabric wall, something to catch my eye and make me smile on days that I might not otherwise remember to do so. I've been reveling in the nice weather, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because this is spring in Colorado and I'm no idiot.

Hulk has taken a bunch of pictures today of what it looks like in Denver right now. A few trees had started blooming (though not the crabapples), a few other trees had tentatively put out leaves. I knew that the lack of leaves so late in the year meant the trees were unwilling to put up with a late season snow killing their initial efforts, so I've been expecting more snow. Also, March is typically Colorado's snowiest month, and we hadn't yet had any here. The news last night predicted snow - but they didn't predict the six inches plus we'd had accumulate overnight, turning the backyard from green and welcoming into white and cold, and I had to wear tights and my stupid clompy boots again, after wearing sandals a few times in the last few weeks.


This is what it currently looks like on the outside of the building where my dark basement cube lurks. The plum tree is bent with the weight of flowers, leaves, and wet spring snow, so different from yesterday's 65 and sunny. It's snowed since sometime in the night, and it's still snowing. Now I am just grateful we had a few weeks of warm before this latest storm.