The unpretty winter posts

It is what it is.

Some people hate that phrase. I find it useful.

It's what you say when there is nothing you can do about a situation, and must just deal with it. It can't or won't change. Your attitude towards it can.

And if, like me, you have just binge-watched House of Cards, you'll know that "to improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often." Churchill.

House of Cards. 3 out of 5 stars. When the writers understand the difference between you and I and you and me, I'll give them another half star.

Moving along.

With all the melting snow on the roof, the leak in the gutter on the building's roof has now created a small ice sheet on the deck. Wind and freeze have spread the leak beyond its original dropping-spot, and the water and ice cover five pots.

So the only change I can effect is to shift from anxiety to resignation, and write off the frozen pots and their contents.  They are solid blocks of ice, meaning that, first, they were waterlogged.  Ordinary freezing of the soil and rootball with a normal amount of moisture is OK, but with all this water, It is what it is. Anaerobic conditions for roots. Death. And I think the clay will crack.

I tried to move them this afternoon but they are frozen to the deck in an inch of ice. Apart from the Iceberg (heheh) rose which may be OK, there are about ten lily bulbs (the tall, late-summer Dunyazades) squeezed in here, a clematis, and some strawberries.

Somebody, our landlord, I think, has frozen Internet.

My seeds are waiting to be planted, a foraging friend is taking bets on when he will tap his maples for sap this year, and, inside, I am forcing some white hyacinths. They say, We won't! I say, You will!

We won't! You will!

So they are.

For them, It is what it is.

Que sera, sera (I love you, Doris).