I am not given to superstition, but…"

I brace myself every time I hear somebody say that. 

"Here it comes,” I say to myself. “Let the weirdness be told.” Usually I am not disappointed, and yet it never fails to surprise me when I learn of the tiny bits of crazy that abide deep in the souls of otherwise reasonable people. 

People like you. 

And people like me. 

So here goes: I am not given to superstition, but I suspect there is some sort of connection between my snowblower, my mower, and Spring weather.

During the winter, the snowblower lives in the garage. It arrives there in late fall, when it trades places with the mower, which winters in the shed in the backyard. In Spring, the trade is reversed. There isn’t enough room in the shed or the garage for both mower and blower to live together. So they pass each other, twice a year, like ships in the night.

The timing of this dance is the issue, and Fall is not the problem. The nights get colder and usually the grass has slowed its growth, maybe gone mostly dormant, and you just know it’s time for the switch. Sometimes the weather lady gives you a hint.

Spring is different. Tougher to read. And like I said, I’m not a terribly superstitious type, but I sense that the “when” of this particular seasonal rite is somehow tied to changes in the weather. I just can’t figure out how.

If I make the trade too early, then it’s gonna snow in May, you can bank on that, and I’m out there trying to push the mower through the snow back to the shed and all the neighbors can see it and is there anything worse than that? If I wait too long to make the trade, there’s a whole different set of problems, mostly in the form of poorly disguised criticisms from the “home crowd” if you will.

“Don’t you think it’s time?”

“If we are getting the hoses out, shouldn’t we just get the mower out too?”

“What are you waiting for? If it snows, you can just pull the blower out of the shed.”

The guy across the street is going to have his say of course: “Still holding out for another snow, Whisler? The Cubs’ opening day is in two days, you know.”

Sure, I could do that, throw caution to the wind, do the dance just whenever, and just hope that all will be well with the world. On the other hand, I feel a responsibility and an urgency to live, to the extent I can, in harmony with God’s creation. That means doing things in their season, not before and not after. It also means taking a little heat from home and a little chuckling from the neighbors, but I can handle that. 

I believe there is a right time to put away and a right time to bring forth. And like every Spring, I just don’t know when that is.