It's Dollhouse Weather!

Surprisingly and rather strangely, Summer in Minnesota stretched languidly from the Dog-Days of August into September...and then into --October??? When the thermometer hit seventy degrees in November, tongues started to wag: "It's the End Times," I heard a lady on the train explain to no one in particular. She nodded as she spoke, her thin lips curled into a tight smile framed by precise, auburn curls. "Yah, I hope my husband gets the gutters cleaned before we're Raptured."

One overhears the oddest things on the train. (That reminds me, the gutters do need cleaning).

But in true, Minnesota fashion, the seventy-degree readings on one day turn to twenty the next. The gardens that til now had sprouted late, guady zinnias and ruffled, purple kale shriveled, gasped their last breath and withered. A cold, autumn rain turned to snow and buried everything under a thick, gloppy blanket.

This morning I rubbed my sleeve over the oval, beveled-glass window of my front door and peered outside.

I remember my Father doing the exact, same thing --only it was thirty years ago, on May first, May Day, his birthday. A late Winter storm had dropped an inch of snow on grass already turned green, the tulips in their neat bed peeking stoically through white frost.

"God damned, Minnesota Winters..." he muttered.

Ah, Winter! Winter in Minnesota. God only knows why any of us stay here. (BTW, my Father moved to Arizona shortly after the above incident). It's not that we don't adore the lovely changing of the seasons, or anything. I live for that! But, seriously! Winter here in Minnesota can go on FOREVER! Snow on the first of May? Really?

But when I rubbed the frost off my window this morning, I did NOT fly into a weather-induced tizzy. Au contraire! I tore open the door, took great breaths of frozen air into my lungs, realized it's NOT the End of the World! It's NOT May first, it's the end of November, for crying out loud! I pounded my chest and exclaiming to no one in particular (take that, religious train lady) I screamed "it's DOLLHOUSE weather!

And with that, I slammed the door and padded down the steps to my basement workshop and beheld the forlorn, cob-web draped image of my neglected Merriman Park.