14
The Late Snow
You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth;
you have made summer and winter.
It’s the middle of March and we woke up—again—to a blanket of snow. Not just a dusting but a legitimate eight to ten inches. Wind is whipping up the snow devils in the fields and any sign of life has retreated back inside its burrow. Our normal visits from our barn cat, Finn, have stopped. He’s surely nestled inside of a barn loft with whatever old blankets or hay bales remain there. The birds have gone silent. A few stray deer trails wander across the neighbor’s back meadow, but that’s it. It feels like all of our spring hopes died overnight. I think of all those bulbs that had started to surface which are now buried far below the perfect white surface.
My phone dings.
“I’m struggling. Please tell me this snow does something for the garden.”
It’s one of my friends from church who is as desperate for spring as I am. Just a few weeks ago we were talking about our hens, how they weren’t laying yet, and we were eagerly counting down the days until our baskets were full again. They had just started laying. And now the snow. The snow that’s sure to stress them out and slow the egg production again, it seems.
So I pick up my phone and stare at the blank slate scene that feels almost perfectly painted outside of my kitchen window. The empty bird feeder swings in the winds. The garden gate is buried shut. The garden is a stark outline of broken sunflower stalks and brown love-in-a-puff vines drying on the trellis. The greenhouse is covered in white piles and the birdbath is frozen over, with a tiny white hat on the icy mini pond. It happens every year. My husband reminds me of this. He has a photo of every year saved on his phone. The spring snow happens every year and I’m always shocked. I always forget. I can never seem to remember the rhythm of winter ordained to turn into spring.
“The snow feeds nitrogen into the soil,” I text my friend as I stand at the window. “The poor man’s fertilizer.” And Lord, we are poor. Don’t I know it. We have enough in our home—enough to pay the bills—but my soul feels poor. My heart feels weary. My body is tired. I am as poor in spirit as they come these days, and the Lord knows I need his work.
The poor man’s fertilizer: nitrogen through snow. Nitrogen, which is necessary for all of the things we grow, is depleted quickly from the ground. Tomatoes, greens, corn, peppers, you name it. They feed on the nitrogen and grow into what we need in mid-summer. The soil needs it, the plants need it, and the snow delivers. In mid-March, when we’re hanging the Irish flag and looking for any sign of spring, the snow nurtures the ground. It feeds the soil nutrients for the long days of work ahead. For the season when nitrogen will be sucked from the ground by the hungry greens, the snow replenishes the storehouse. The snow tells us to wait. It tells me to slow down. It pushespause. It tells me: “We’re in this tog
