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The Different Springs
Upstate New York’s and North Carolina’s springs are not the same
Upstate New York “Spring”
I spent 66 years of my life waiting for spring in upstate New York, just 40 miles south of Lake Ontario. Winter often comes early there; more than once, we put our coats over our Halloween costumes when we went Trick or Treating. Thanksgiving often included a blizzard, either right before or right after. I remember one year wondering how my father was seeing through the snowflakes on our way home from dinner at my grandmother’s.
My birthday is December 6, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the years there wasn’t snow on the ground that day. White Christmas? Almost guaranteed. White Easter? Ditto.
By March, we all wanted to burn the winter coats we’d been wearing for months. March was the yo-yo month: there might be a few days of weather comfortably above freezing, followed by more snow and cold. There was a blizzard the week of St. Patrick’s Day nearly every year. It was the “spring break” week of one of my colleges, so I planned on staying home that week and cleaning the house between trips outside to shovel the sidewalk and driveway.
April might see some blooms of snowdrops and daffodils and forsythia. There might be some buds on some trees, unless they’d been…
