A Dirty Sign of the Coming Spring...

The first sign that this brutal winter might eventually give way to Spring was seen in downtown Minneapolis today....

At the end of the day in the parking ramp where I park, the concrete floor was covered with hundreds of crusty, dirty globs of hardened of ice and snow born from automobile undercarriages and wheel-wells, loosened by the first above-freezing temperatures in almost two months.

In fact, the last month of winter in Minnesota is known by a native American word from the Dakota Sioux tribe that translates thusly:  "the time of the snow boogers."

Spring, it is out there somewhere.

A Tale of Two Aprils

Since it appears that Minnesota has now entered the next great ice age, I'll take this opportunity to show you, with great fond memories, what my front garden looked like last year at the end of April, with tulips blooming and irises approaching bloom.

And, though I've been complaining about it plenty already, here's what April looked like late last week:

With that, I am hereby done with whining about the weather. Politics, movies, office politics: I'll continue to whine about these, but the weather is now off the table.