Late spring

It's 10 below zero as I write this diatribe against winter.  Snow in DC, frigid temps throughout the Northeast and seemingly no end in sight to the season of our discontent.   The long range forecast shows snow here stretching into next week and beyond.  The NCR is now the North Country Tundra (NCT) and will remain so until Lake Champlain is ice free.  It is harder to find a reason to be optimistic about the weather than it is to find clues about the missing Malaysian Airlines plane.  Usually by now I have the cold frames in the garden heating up for planting.  They are buried under a foot of snow and ice.  The maple syrup makers should be in full swing right now, but until daytime temps rise above 40 degrees and nighttimes stay above 20, there will be little sap flowing.   These weeks can't be made up, as the maple sap run will end as the trees leaf out.   They will try to do so as soon as possible, ending  the season.  For the rest of us, hope springs eternal, but the longer spring is delayed, the less early season planting will be done and the more we will pin our hopes on later crops.  No one ever said this was easy, or fair.