Snow Changes Things

It's not an April Fool's Day joke, it's the real deal. Snowing on the first of April. Snow happens.

Here in Pennsylvania, the old timers call it Onion Snow. The dark crunchy green of wild onions, at the pasture's edge, blanketed in winter's last mantle. Or, as the old wives tell it, it always snows at least once on the daffodils.

The winter of my birth, 1971, was a snowy one in Cuyahoga Falls, according to the photo album of my first year. The little house Jim and Marge bought, just for my arrival, so raw it does not yet have foundation shrubs, momentarily blends into the landscape onto which it was plunked, thanks to winter's forgiving blanket. My brother, bundled in pre-microfiber 1970s winter wear, lists back helplessly on a Radio Flyer in the front yard, as immobile as Ralphie, a turtle on its back.

Snow changes things. A formative memory:

The smell of candles, a warm handshake from Dr. Drake. Mr. Chamberlain's Bach postlude wafts out wooden Methodist church doors over just-fallen snow. Under a giant hackberry tree, a lamb, someone's tiny pony, hay bales, Mother and child. Across the street, Charlie Boyd's tinsel and lights, so garish by day, look just about perfect shrouded in snow. All of this happened in the one hour we were inside, as if on cue.

Snow on the Memorial Strip, in Cuyahoga Falls

When it is unexpected, snow can startle with its sudden silent blanket. Once in downtown Akron, I stepped out from a smoky club for fresh air, unaware that snow and then sleet had been falling. Everything was cast in an eerie, even light, so bright, I could see as if it were day. I walked for blocks, crunching through virgin snow, over a canal long buried under streets and stores.

In 12 years as a horticulturist in Philadelphia, snowy winters, until recently, were quite rare. Winters were a soggy, gray, barren affair.

But not the last few seasons. For one born into a snowy winter, I have relished these last few niveous years. Our usual urban routine disrupted: cross country skiers glide unimpeded down our busiest avenues.

Our fair city, it turns out, is fairly ravishing under snowfall. The newly restored cliffside gardens at the Art Museum and Water Works, courtesy of those very busy horticulturists at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, resemble nothing so much as a Swiss Alpine village.

In my own West Philadelphia urban village, those wily Victorians had to have abundant snowfall in mind when they built all these turrets and gables. Many a morn I awoke, thinking I was inhabiting someone's under-the-tree Victorian Christmas Village. Although, this stuff was not cotton batting.

In my own horticultural work, I can't say that I specifically plan for how things will look under a cover of snow. But it must always be somewhere in the back of my mind.

I know the townhouse I landscape in Rittenhouse Square gets tremendous foot traffic all year. Although everyone appreciates the lemony yellow tree hibiscus in summer, I think they especially need a little plucking up in winter.

This past winter, I think I just about got it right: Black Dragon Japanese Cedar, yellow twig curly dogwood, aurora sedge, golden juniper, African knobs, white doll's eye berries, and just a few magnolia branches.

Similarly, at sidewalk level, out in West Philadelphia, a spire of cryptomeria, goldenthread false cypress, and Harry Lauder's Walking Stick just about did the trick.

Winter in the city: a time to  slow down, hold tight, pull close. Snow changes everything. Even when it falls on the  onions.