I feel like it is the middle of summer. You know, after the fields are plowed, the seeds are put in, the crops come up in neat green rows of cultivated dirt and work to produce the fruit of their purpose.
Then hot sun beats down and showers fall and all the care that was exercised to give the plant health goes to waste and the weeds come. They fill in all the empty spaces between the plants and grow higher and keep crowding until they push the plant down, block its nourishment, stunt it, kill it.
This is a picture of my life. Is it summer?
I look outside my window and I see no green. The calendar now says February. I know winter lingers.
The week pressed down. The “weeds” came and crowded out the joys. They got so thick that one night — as a hard icy rain fell — I put on my running shoes at 10:30 p.m., left the warmth, and ran as big drops pelted me … had to run it off … get it out … summer … winter … didn’t matter. Snow fell the next morning and blocked my vision as I drove across Manley Lane and Murray Lane to work.
Now it’s the weeds still demanding time and attention. And it’s the anthology that I want to work on. We’ve got a title! We’ve got a cover idea! The stories are in process of being approved by the writers, following edits. It’s all coming together … and close!
But today, I’ve got to attend to weeds. I’ve got to establish priorities. I’ve got to get some order back in the fields of this cold and harsh world.
Kathy Rhodes 
I love the feel of this; the way you put these words and phrases together. I just knew it would sound great to read it out loud. And it did.
And I understand about the weeds. But the flowers come when you’re not looking; and then trees to shade out the weeds.
Sounds like the Anthology is going to be terrific.
Summer feels a long ways away, but I know you’ll be seeing signs of spring soon in your part of the world. At the end of February last year, in Oxford, I was stunned to see a robin singing on the budded tree branch outside my hotel window. Flew back home to Colorado in a nasty ice storm (made it home just before they closed the airport), but the memory of that robin got me to May, when we got our spring. Spring can’t stay away forever–it will come this year, too.