SPRINGING ANYWAY (WITH THE HELP OF SOME GOOD ADVICE)

Libby K. Hanaway
2 days ago
10 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

Hello, readers! Spring is officially underway, and its fresh green messaging has different meanings for different readers, location depending.

For Northeasterners, spring brings blessed, balmy, bird-song relief from their cold, cruel winter. Pacific Northwesterners will continue with their GoreTex because the rain keeps raining, as expected (though the week ahead looks nice 😎). Texas is its usual weather wild card. And in Colorado and elsewhere in the arid West, spring swooped in early, ready or not (we were not.)

FYI, we begin with some weather gloom, but the arc of this post improves and you'll be rewarded with baby goats.

Kody the Weather Guy — Colorado's best-known online source for accurate weather forecasts — often greets his readers with endearments like "Hello, you exhausted little potatoes!" (that was today) or "Good morning, you confused chicken nuggets!" It's part of his regular shtick, but with our very off-script weather year in CO, we actually are tired and confused.

Winter flat-out skipped us this year. It snowed in the Denver-Boulder area maybe three times total — lightly — as our parkas and ice scrapers lay dormant. And there were no deep freezes to manage the ravenous summertime grasshopper population, which has been getting out of hand. It's like we went from Halloween weather to Easter weather and missed everything in between.

Some have held out hope, pointing to Colorado's stealthy winter season that normally makes March and April the snowiest months of all. [In our first spring here four years ago — when we did not yet know this fact — we got a bona fide blizzard with nearly 20 inches of snow in mid-March. And on May 20, 2022, with Rick's folks here for a visit, we were positioning Home Depot buckets over our first-year plants as snow blanketed the green and flowered Front Range. We ate burgers outside on the 19th, chili inside on the 20th. This is all somewhat normal here.]

But so far we've had no spring blizzards or even dustings, and with none in sight. In place of fluffy, white, river-filling snow, we've had days and days of gusty, fire-fueling wind ... an uninvited guest that does not know when to leave.

Our normal gardening guidelines are no help either. Here are the regular rules for spring: no matter how itchy you are to launch into the season, you do not plant one single, lovely annual before Mother’s Day, lest you cry your way back to the garden center to replace your frostbitten firstborns. And no matter how scraggly your overwintered perennials become, you wait for consistently warmer overnight temps to cut them back, lest you bulldoze the homes of innocently sleeping pollinators. Are we following these rules this year? No one seems to know.

Trees budded out two months early, the tulips are wilting, and our mid-summer clematis is ready to explode into bloom. We had record-breaking, tank-tops-and-flip-flops heat last week, and the Fall-Winter-Spring snowpack — which fills our rivers, reservoirs, and municipal tanks — is 60% below normal. Ski towns have had a terrible season. We drove up to Aspen for a concert a couple of weeks ago, just as the fur-coated, spring-break skiers from Texas and Tennessee started arriving, and this was the view opposite the Silver Queen Gondola. The mountain looked covered in cocoa powder, which is not the sort of powder you are expecting during ski season.

(In brighter news: directly behind this bare mountain and close beside the gondola in the

machine-made snow was our regal, Pic of the Week silver-y fox.)

We are getting uneasy here with our no-winter/fast-spring, and chatting with store clerks stokes the apprehension. You want to acknowledge the glorious warm sunshine in a friendly way, but you also know the price — dead grass, stressed trees, continued Red Flag fire warnings, guaranteed water restrictions — is coming due. So you have this kind of back-and-forth:

“Wow! Great weather today 😁!”

“Yeah, it’s so nice, but I’m a little worried about summer 😬.”

“Yeah, same 😐.”

(Maybe more banter)

Cautiously: "Well, okay, thanks — bye 🙂🙃 ..."

Tentatively: "Yep, you take care — bye 🙂🙃 ..."

So we don't quite know what to say, and we also don't know exactly what to do. Per the pollinator protection plan described above, I had been wavering on clearing leaves and cutting back the dead perennial stalks that might still be hiding newborn ladybugs, butterfly larvae, and solitary bees. But when Anastasia — the no-nonsense landscaper who has helped us with a few projects — heard my hesitation last week, she grabbed a handful of the stringy, dead, gray catmint that surrounded the fresh green catmint and cocked one eyebrow as if to say, “You are really overthinking this."

Also relevant: I am listening to a novel about the wretchedness of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, which I know is not helping.

I bring you Colorado's doom-y weather report not to drag you down, but to

a.) state the state of the state

b.) and share some good, widely-applicable advice that is now framing my response to the state of the state ... and much more

We have been watching many of the NCAA March Madness games (Rick, directly / me, mainly indirectly), but during the Duke-UConn game on Sunday, we were sitting outside for a makeshift happy hour. As we dipped into our hummus, E texted an oblivious Rick to analyze and discuss the game's shocking end.

I am not especially self-help-y, but I find Brad Stulberg to be a reliable voice of slow-and-steady, common-sense self-improvement (in the vaguely-similar but non-athletic spirit of my Case for January post here). In addressing UConn's unexpected thrill of victory and Duke's also-unexpected agony of defeat*, Stulberg lays out UConn's "next-play mentality" in a way that both sports fans and not-sports fans can appreciate:

Play the game in front of you.

Not the game you wanted to happen,

Not the game that just happened.

Not the game you hoped would happen.

But the game that is happening.

(Click through the gray arrows in the black zone for Stulberg's full post — it's good.)

*Thank you, 1970s ABC Wide World of Sports

copywriters and host Jim McKay for this ingeniously enduring slogan

Geez, pick just about any situational category — serious and significant or small potatoes — and the messaging of PLAY THE GAME IN FRONT OF YOU becomes instantly relevant:

fearing a looming layoff scenario at work
adapting to the chronic health needs of a child
starting over after divorce
hearing that your seventh home offer did not win out
recovering from a long-haul injury
wishing much of AI would go back into the genie bottle (or that could just be me)
discovering that someone left only the dregs of the mint chocolate chip ice cream in the freezer

I don't hear this advice as embracing or passively accepting difficult or unwanted circumstances but instead facing them squarely/realistically and determining the next steps. It's also not asking us to march (or shuffle) forward robotically and impassively. Without the dramatic shot clock of an NCAA basketball game, there's time before, during, and after to cycle through and process normal (and healthy!) stages of anger or fear or grief. But the question still remains: in the face of what you may not want, what are you (this is a general you, not necessarily a you, you) going to DO? You (we) still have to get up and figure out the next play. It's pragmatism as momentum.

And so, Brad — my distant sports-as-life-mentor-Brad — I am trying out your "next-play" advice with the Colorado weather patterns I do not like or want but cannot control.

One easy test case: Tending beautiful, thirsty Kentucky bluegrass in Colorado — the grass most of us here inherited and still enjoy — is now like cultivating Augusta National Golf Club's moisture-loving azaleas in the prickly scrub of Sedona, AZ. Just go with the cactus, you might say with logic and impatience, but I, for one, understand misplaced commitment. As a homegrown Midwesterner, I crave a yard of soft green grass. So easy! So lush! So picnic-y! I love soft green grass. However, as a current Coloradan, I have a front yard of dry, crunchy straw that will need pools-full of water to make it barefoot-ready and marginally green. Brad, I'd like you to know that I am letting go — reluctantly but realistically — of my outdated landscape vision as Anastasia soon removes a big grassy patch from our small front yard. Goodbye, green-grass dream 🌱! I will play the game in front of me 🌾.

To merge the lift-up mission of this website, Brad Stulberg's next-play philosophy, and Colorado's unwanted-but-actual climate situation, here's my summary statement:

face reality / adapt responsibly / still ENJOY whatever we can

I LOVE spring and I wholeheartedly ENJOY spring — the new wash of green in the trees, the determined plants pushing up toward sunshine, the finches chirping in the backyard. Spring is hope expressed through nature. Spring also suggests action, nudging us — without much effort — from the soft winter couch back into the great outdoors. And like back-to-school pencils in September and the new calendar page in January, spring gives us a third shot at a new start.

So that's spring for me in general — what about our dry, crunchy Spring of 2026?

FIRST, I AM ENJOYING THE SPRING WE HAVE

Our weather worries aside, the spring we have right now is still fresh and beautiful. For my February birthday, C secured tickets for a March outing to the Denver Botanic Gardens. We went last Thursday and were surrounded by new bloomy beauty everywhere we looked. In the likely case our plants fade out early this year, I have these jewels in my back pocket:

Also, the bees are back, the serviceberries in the backyard are fluffy white, and the tight buds on the cherry tree are bursting open. My favorite place in our house is not in our house but just outside the back sliding-glass door. We've been out there many evenings this warm spring, toasting to all the early earthy action as we eat more hummus:

One extra bonus: with our early-April summertime weather, the outdoor seating areas of the restaurants along our town's main road are already PACKED. You've got a party atmosphere on any given Tuesday night. Servers are getting nice tips / local restaurant owners gain some budget breathing room / eaters seem to be having a great time as I drive past at 25 mph. Good good good 😀.

SECOND, I AM ENJOYING OTHER SPRINGS IN OTHER PLACES

I have never seen the glorious cherry blossoms blooming in Washington, DC, but I have seen them gracing the University of Washington campus in Seattle. Just like returning Sockeye salmon signal each Seattle summer, the UW Yoshino cherry blossoms announce every spring. For a few weeks in March or April, Seattle's gray-sky gloom gives way to a lacy canopy of pale pink on the campus's Quad. Students can peacefully gaze upward and forget all about Econ 220 as tiny petals float down all around. It's a fairyland scene, a magical distraction for haggard students prepping for midterms and the loveliest magnet for local beauty-seekers.

Snapped on my camera as a UW Editing student in 2018

No Quad stroll for me this year, but the UW cherry blossoms have their very own Instagram page that you and I can enjoy from anywhere:

(There's also a UW Cherry Blossoms live cam, but I think these pics are better)

🌿 🌿 🌿

If you'd like a wider view of springtime, this USA Today piece gives a nice, quick photographic tour of springtime beauty across the country — per our discussion above, you've got azaleas in GA, cherry blossoms in DC, and mountains in Frisco, CO. There's a sea of advertisements to wade through, but the pics themselves are very pretty!

🌿 🌿 🌿

And for our grand finale, baby farm animals in springtime 😍! Whatever existential questions you may be wrestling with today, frolicking baby goats — backed by a catchy song — might be part of the answer:

I don't know about you, but I am already feeling better. Put me in, coach — I'm ready for the next play.

Also: guess what?

Late Wednesday afternoon, as I was sitting here writing about our impending drought, I heard a strange sound and looked outside.

It had actually, finally, gloriously started to rain 🙌.

EXTRA GOOD

ALSO LINKED THROUGH THE EXTRA GOOD PAGE HERE

FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2026

1._GOOD SCIENCE + TECHNOLOGY: You might remember that we were JUST talking about Apollo 13 and live views from the International Space Station in our Live Cams Can: Part 2 post right here, so the topic of space travel still feels fresh. And even though the Artemis II's crewed, flyby moon mission has been all over the news, the flight's early quirks make it worth repeating.

The take-off on Wednesday was blessedly smooth and a mighty sight. And then came word that the toilet (the so-called "lunar loo") malfunctioned after the spacecraft reached Earth's orbit ... and now the Microsoft Office emailing system is on the fritz ... and it all just seemed so EVERYDAY-this-could-be-my-house-NORMAL that you might forget this was an absolute knock-out collaborative achievement of space technology. Artemis II's journey marks the first time in over 50 years that astronauts have ventured close to the moon and will be the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.

Just as Mission Control guided Apollo 13's Jim Lovell and crew to finagle a square-hole-round-peg filter strategy out of spare parts and duct tape, so did Mission Control 2026 coach Mission Specialist I Christina Koch on how to save the bathroom facilities with some "plumbing tricks " for the flight's remaining 10 days. I'd say Koch is already the runaway hero of this mission. A cabin temperature issue (also resolved) prompted the crew to dig long-sleeve shirts out of their baggage. And the Microsoft email snafu seems to be continuing, but I am sure NASA ingenuity will get that back on track, too. The word I keep coming back to regarding these mishaps is relatable ... yet for an entirely unrelatable feat of scientific and engineering brilliance.

Godspeed to our astronauts on their swing around the far side of the moon!

🚀

Finally, speaking of science (fiction), we have tickets to see Project Hail Mary this weekend, a movie (and book) that has wondrously united readers/viewers across every political and social demographic. I've just been told I MUST read the book before seeing the movie, which, given the timing, is unlikely. E has a copy of the book but it is with her in TX, and I already have a book club book coming up on deadline, and I'm only on page 13. C had the idea of seeing the movie, reading the book, and seeing the movie again, which sounds like a great solution. Will give you my movie review next time!