After the Last Snowflake Falls

When it’s spring in South Dakota, April showers frequently have to be shoveled. New Easter outfits, just like Halloween costumes, are best designed to be worn with winter coats. According to our outside thermometer, it was six degrees at six o’clock this morning. That’s enough to make even the most optimistic crocus decide to pull up roots and head south.

Weather like this, life-threatening for newborn calves, causes serious work and worry for farmers and ranchers. For those of us who don’t have to go out in the snow to rescue half-frozen babies whose mothers don’t appreciate the help, spring snow is merely an inconvenience. It won’t last long, and shoveling it is good exercise.

But still. One can’t help but feel a teeny, tiny bit abandoned when, with suspiciously convenient timing, one’s sweetheart and snow-shoveling partner just happens to be “working” in California during the two early April snowfalls. Just as he was “working” in Nevada during the late March snowfall.

I couldn’t help it. While I was doing my solitary shoveling, my emotions overflowed into song. Here it is, with appreciation and/or apologies to Freddy Fender. (If “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” hasn’t already started up in your brain, you can listen to it here.)