April Snow and More

We woke up to a fresh blanket of snow today.  A quick check of the calendar confirms it is the month of April and is officially Spring.  Humph.  Yesterday afternoon I stopped at the local bar to have a drink and spoke with a city employee who said he has driven the snow plows for 20 years and he's never had to plow in April.  Well, I hope he didn't stay and drink too much because I'm sure he was out in the wee hours plowing snow.  This was a rather large system over the upper Midwest yesterday and last night, and we got pretty lucky with mostly rain yesterday and then overnight when the temperatures plummeted most of the snow went north of us.  The system was headed east, and the east has already been pummeled with snow this spring.  Good luck to 'em.  Our snow mostly melted by the time I got home, though I'm sure it will linger in the shady spots.

I took this picture as I set out to work this morning.  I've been taking vacation days until I get a steroid shot in the back next week Tuesday but I couldn't get today off so instead of finagling it off I just sucked it up and went in.  I got through it but I'm growing to hate my work chair lots, luckily we'll be getting new ones soon.  I usually take some vacation time in the spring anyway, normally sometime in May.  I'm just taking it early this year due to circumstances, I guess.

Another thing to note is that just a day or two after my last post the ice on Lake Monona was gone from view.  I'm not sure about the larger Lake Mendota, there may be a bit in the middle over there yet but if so it should be short lived.

Hang in there, people, actual spring will show up eventually.  We have a few plants coming up in the flowerbeds by the porch.  I'll have time, so I may post a picture tour over at the garden blog soon.