It’s warm and dry here in the Valley of the Sun but things are pretty crazy back home in Massachusetts with all the snow there is and with more yet to come. February is a winter month for sure, but it’s also the month that Spring starts showing up around these parts in the Feathery Acacia bushes that have bloomed into their loveluy and unusual burnt yellow color:

Ralph Waldo Emerson conjures up a romantic sense of friends gathered around a roaring fire as the snow piles up outside and the bitter wind seeks every crack and crevasse to chill you to the bone:

“Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the withered air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, and housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.”

Hat tip: egreenway.com

The reality is you just hunker down with a cocktail or two and devour Cheetos until your head explodes. Or snowbird to Florida and leave the misery and digging out to others, right?

I’ll take 80 degrees and a sun-drenched driving range any day.