Cabin fever

Last Saturday we spent the day at a lovely place, full of plants from all over the world, without a single weed in sight. It was a Conservatory, and much as I know that the place is precisely manicured and pruned and controlled, parts of it give the most wonderful illusion of wildness. Outside it was cold and windy and snowless - the most useless kind of winter weather - and inside it was lush and comfortable and green. I'd like to critique the concept, but I find it irresistable. I can imagine no better cure for January which doesn't involve long-distance travel.

For some incomprehensible reason, afterward the girls were just itching to go to a playground outside. We stopped at one, and I got out with them for just a few minutes so they could run around until, I thought, they got too cold to continue. But even though they were in bare legs and fancy clothes they'd chosen for the Conservatory, while I was dressed relatively well for the weather, they outlasted me.

Since then, it got even colder. On Sunday I left the house for yoga class, and then again for the girls' basketball clinic, but I wanted to just curl up. Once I got home, I didn't face the outdoors again until I got out of my car at work this morning. Of course, after a whole weekend of bitter cold without a flake of snow, it snowed. By the time I got home it was dark and too melted again for sledding. I'm ready to go back to the Conservatory and live there, until spring.