A Dark and Stormy Night

January is in its last week, and it seems as though this month has stretched on forever. It started off bitterly cold and then turned into a rain-soaked mess, which we are still in the middle of. Today was the first day we've had in a week where it was not pouring down.

It's been so foggy here that the mornings and nights have rendered the rest of the world invisible to me. When I look out my front door, all I can see of the house across the street is one hazy halo of light from their front porch. The trees are hulking spider-shapes that loom out unexpectedly whenever I leave the safety of my porch. It's wonderful and disturbing and makes me think that ghosts must be lurking somewhere out there, because if ever there was weather that suited a lost spirit, this is it.

Today was unusually warm for the season, and it was like the tiniest scrap of spring crept out for a single day, but next week it will be lost to the cold temperatures again. The ground is soggy, made up of sucking mud that weighs down my shoes and gets all over everything.

Such is winter, here in Kentucky. It's really no more than I expect. The only good thing so far is that we've not had another ice storm, like we did last year.

Despite the brief respite from the rain, I stayed inside for the most part today. I wanted to take my camera out and take some pictures of the bare trees, the flooded creeks, and my poor, mud-caked goat, but laziness prevailed. Not laziness, exactly, because I have been working today. I've been making jewelry, and etching copper, and doing the massive loads of laundry that this time of year generates.

I wish spring were here, and I look everywhere for signs of it, but I find none. It won't be until the end of next month that it starts to show itself in the red buds clustering on the maple trees, and the first crocus blooms pushing their way out of the ground. By the end of March the woods will have the faintest haze of green and Bluets will start to pop up in clusters around the yard.

For now it's just mud, and rain, and ice, and more fog than a victorian murder mystery would know what to do with, and a slow deep ache in my joints that begs for warmer, drier weather. Alas, I must wait.