If you can't trust your weatherman….

Who can you trust? If I'm going to be paranoid about "the government" I know which branch I wouldn't trust with Grandma's recipe for pound cake.

I'm pretty sure the people over at Environment Canada have it in for us, or maybe they just have a weird sense of humour.

It was a reasonably warm plus 4 C (39 F) yesterday afternoon so I went out to inspect the flowerbeds on either side of the main walk. There are still some lingering snowbanks and the newly-exposed grass is the most awful mess you ever saw, grey and slimy-looking.

The flower beds are covered with a carpet of sodden leaves and sad stalks and sprigs of last year's growth, but there are also many green spears of purple crocus popping up (some with fat purple buds).  The osteospermums are emerging and the heartleaf bergenia (aka elephant ears) looks as if it didn't even notice we had a winter. The other thing that's up already are dandelions, lots and lots of dandelions.

Despite these early birds, I'm sure we've lost a lot of plants this winter. Time will tell but we had record cold for weeks on end and almost twice as much snow as usual. The snow from the walk gets shoveled onto the flower beds, which in itself isn't bad, but it's laden with the salt that's put down to melt the ice on the walk, and that is most definitely not good.

But, since the weatherman was predicting a warm sunny 13 C (55 F) tomorrow I decided to run to the WalMart this afternoon. The weather man said there was a chance of showers, but the temperature was supposed to stay well above freezing. So when I went out about 1:00 I was surprised to find that it was snowing very lightly; tiny flakes which couldn't decide whether they wanted to be rain or snow.

However, by the time I'd finished my shopping I realized my trust in the weatherman had once again been misplaced. Here I was, no hat, no gloves, in a flannel-lined windbreaker, and there was a blizzard blowing outside, with huge, globby flakes falling so thickly you couldn't see more than 100 feet ahead of you and a howling wind which just stood still and blew from every direction at once.

I loaded my shopping into the car, then got out the snow brush and cleared the windows and the side view mirrors, all clotted thick with snow. In that three or four minutes I was soaked to the skin. By the time I had my seat belt buckled both side view mirrors were completely clumped over again. I rolled down my window and cleared the one on the driver's side with a handful of tissues and directed some unladylike phrases to the one beyond my reach.

I know the route home, and how to avoid driving it where anyone can come up on my right. It would have to do.  Nonetheless half way home I had to pull over, get out and clear the side view mirrors (and the side windows) again. It's like the car was a magnet and we were driving through a storm of iron filings. But that's spring snow for you, half snow, half Elmer's Glue.

The weatherman has now changed his prediction for tomorrow to partly cloudy and 9 C (48 F).  I'm not sure whether to trust him or not. With his record we may have an iceberg headed our way.