Mock Spring claims a life

A plump vibrant snowwoman sprung to life last week, right beside my bus stop. (Does snowwoman have two w’s or one? It looks wrong both ways.)

I photographed her every day throughout her short life. This is Snowwoman on March 9th.

Here she is at 7:00 AM on March 13th, looking a little thin and bedraggled, poor thing. A little limp around the edges. A little desperate and haunted around the eyes.

This is Snowwoman at 5:15 PM that same day: dead, at the tender age of 4.5 days, cut down in the prime of her life by Mock Spring.

Despite witnessing the indignities suffered by poor sweet Snowwoman, I enjoyed Mock Spring. We basked in thirteen delicious degrees yesterday. I took my hat and mittens off, but I wasn’t gullible enough to put my boots in the basement just yet, or go out motorcycle-shopping. I’ve been through enough seasons in my life to know winter isn’t going to surrender in the first round. And see? The mercury’s dipping down to minus 13 tonight and minus 17 on Monday.

If only Snowwoman could have hung on through Mock Spring, she’d have had a new lease on life. I tried to tell her that on the morning of the day she died, but she couldn’t hear me: her ears were lying in a puddle at her feet.