Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature-- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.- Rachel Carson

When I was younger it seemed to behoove me to gripe about winter and it's many uncomfortable facets. But as I've grown older my opinion of the season has changed. I even enjoy walking in the snow on those frigid days when the snow underfoot squeeks from the extreme cold. I even find a perverse sort of joy in the coldness of my automobile as I'm waiting for the engine to warm up and generate enough heat for the heater to work it's slow but certain magic before I reach my destination.

It's the certainty of change that is appealling to me. When the season seems to become intolerable, it will change. The most wonderful of all the seasons will be upon us in a little over two months. That season of renewal, in the reawakening of nature, the expanding of our world so to speak. We will start all over again the attempt to harness our little portion of the world into what we perceive as the perfect lawn or garden, and begin our battle that I personally seldom win with the noxious weeds. It's a battle I am prepared to lose, but for a while the battle is joined, me against nature, until, of course, nature wins. It's preordained.

While I spin my wheels in that annual battle I will have the game to spend my evenings with. The game? Baseball of course.

My wife will devote much of her time to growing the perfect tomato, and planting the latest show flower in her never-ending quest for the final piece of the flowergarden. It won't be the best because that would end the quest, the experimenting, the fun of it all. After all that's what it's all about, isn't it?