Last Friday a friend told me that her sister in Florida had called and was complaining about the cold. It had dropped to 53 degrees!

On the other hand here in the Northwest we were yodeling and twittering like spring-addled birds, because it reached 53 degrees. It is rare that these diametrically opposed climates, the temperate Northwest and tropical Southeast, sync up climatically.

I couldn’t help but crow, “We’re as warm as Florida.” It rose up in me like a hallelujah, like the feathered arrogance of robins spilling across the lawn in their pre-nesting-battle games. Everything was hurdling forward, getting kicked far ahead of this aging player by the preternatural warming.

I ran around taking picture of all the tropical looking plants in the garden for yet another tropical post.

(Fatsia japonica variegata)

 (Rhododendron protistum))

But then it hit.

Drama queen winter would not be ignored— maybe I declared it spring one too many times in the last few weeks—so she’s hit us with frost, and snow at lower elevations. Everything has pulled back from the exaltations toward the deep quiet within called winter: withinter.

Still the winter had been so mild this year that I haven’t really missed having a tropical vacation. I‘ve been focusing on how marvelously mild it has been here. And keep convincing myself that the lushness of the Northwest is every bit as good as the tropics. Yet I have not put on my shorts, or flip-flops or sunscreen, though my face pinkens on the sunnier days this unusually warm March. I can even feel a homeopathic dose of vitamin D coursing through my veins.

There will be plenty of time for tulipic triumph, magnolian explosions and the endless chatter of nesting and egging. For now I look away from my fantasy that the tropics might be moving ever so slowly northward, and embrace these last few days of winter admiring the snowy whiteness of hybrid hellebores…

…and the chilly blue of Chionodoxa forbesii ‘Blue Giant’ as it pushes through a mat of Cardamine triphylla sparkling with a flurry of flowers. Now that spring is so darned close I’m even feeling a bit of sympathy for the winter I tried to rush out the door by ignoring it.

“It’s seems you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”