on, community.

It's the first snow in Boulder. There's a foot & a half of blanket of billow on everything but the roads & sidewalks. A said you'll get a fine if you don't shovel your walkway. Though I don't enjoy being expected to do something, I do like this rule for romantic reasons. Imagine waking up at 4:43, it's an hour you wouldn't have thought to - and the sky is only dim in its purpled pregnant exhalation of flakes & you put a pair of boots on that probably have a leak in the seam & a cute, not entirely weather savvy coat, and you shovel. And you're alone for a moment, cheeks rushed, solitary. Maybe you put salt on the walk after, because you're thinking about the people that might appreciate it. Or maybe it's the ecosystem you think about, and besides, you did your part for the people anyhow. There's something about the snow & how the city handles it, that makes me feel connected to people again.

Yesterday at the farm stand I had to prepare for the imminent snow, or for the 14 degrees it's supposed to reach this evening. I had to carry several hundred pumpkins from strawstack displays outside to the circus tent, dodging mice & one big black thing that was either a baby crow at high speed, or a vole. I tried doing it in a romantic way. At first I tried setting like-pumpkins together - size, color, type. (We seriously have every gourd & pumpkin to man: acorn, blue ballet, blue hokkaido, buttercup, butternut, carnival, cinderella, delicata, fairytale, goblins eggs, hedgehog gourds, hubbard, jarrahdale, kabocha, lil pumpkemon, long island cheese, new england pie, pink banana, queensland blue, red kuri, red warty thing, rouge vif d'etampes, spaghetti, sunshine, sweet lightening, turban, white, and on.) I like to think, as I've said before, that this is the reward. I read up on the Greenmarket in NYC, and I would very much love to see it.
So, I tried to be romantic & purposeful, but it turned out I was just supposed to throw them all in, one on top of another, to save them from the frost, and when the snow goes, they'll be put back on the wet, saggy, potent, mousey displays of browning straw. There are 5 days left for the farm stand. I spent hours lifting pumpkins, and I think my problem was that I was trying to make them look pretty for the sort of people that would brave the snow to come look at them, not for the easy ones who'd come after the melt, after roads were clear, when the sun would come, cause it will. I was trying to work for the die-hards not the cozies.