Snow for Beltane!

May 1, Beltane, usually celebrated with fires and the acknowledgement that Spring is finally here again. Well, here in the Frozen Northlands, someone forgot to send the memo. My May 1 started out cold and rainy, switched to snow in the afternoon, moved back to rain around 5:00 pm, and stayed cold and drippy all day. As days go, I'm sure the plants were rather happy (except for the snow portion of the day), but my personal experience of a day with temperatures in the 30's in May was not fun. We were so cold after work that instead of eating our usual salad for dinner, we ordered Pad Thai and egg rolls from our local Thai restaurant. Very good, but not what we had originally intended to eat for dinner.

In mid-afternoon I looked outside to see large flakes cascading from
the sky in front of the store. This view through the front door is of
the college bookstore directly across the street. 

Within a half hour, the awnings of the bookstore were completely covered
in snow. It never stuck on the streets, but cars and roofs were covered for
a short time. Then it shifted back to rain and disappeared. Crazy day! 

Of course the other part of Spring/Summer in Minnesota is our road construction which has one of the main roads leading to my shop from the northern suburbs all but impassable right now. I've been using alternative routes for more than a month now, but customers who aren't familiar with the area are getting caught in the backlogs and single lane nightmares. It's not making for happy people.

Our outdoor pool is used heavily in the summer. It opens on Memorial Day at
the end of May and closes on Labor Day in early September. During the week
we have both the indoor and outdoor pools open (weather permitting), but on
weekends, it's the outdoor pool only. It's Olympic sized - 50 meters long, and
the serious swimmers just love being able to swim without turning as often. 

I also received the "Pool Closing Schedule" from the Twin Cities YMCA. This is the summer schedule of pool maintenance. Amazingly, one of their newest pools, the Midway Y, will be closed for a week in late August, I'm not sure why, it's only been open for less than two years. The pool that I use on alternate Mondays will be closed for almost two weeks in June. That will/may make our little pool more crowded, as well as pack our outdoor pool to a higher capacity crowd, since a lot of people from that area look at our pool as their alternate. Still, those who join us at 5:00 am are hard-core and we usually already know most of them. We'll manage.

Our indoor pool will switch to Monday-Friday only. There will be some days
when Rosemary and I may have it to ourselves, and other days when we'll
have to join everyone outside because of lifeguard schedules. In times of
bad weather, everyone outside has to move indoors and that can be very
crowded. We watch the weather carefully in the early summer mornings. 

So the rain should be stopping and the temperatures should be swinging upward again today. Will it be warm enough for DH to work on the castle and other things he needs to get done this summer? Maybe. He'll have to be the ultimate judge on that. I think things need to be at least ten degrees warmer before he can start serious work and we're actually on a rather tight time schedule, so every day he can't work is a problem.

Have a great Tuesday. I'm hoping the weather is kind to you wherever you are today.