Remember the poem:

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,

How does your garden grow,

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

We used to substitute a phrase for the last line and say, “And all those (blank-blank) weeds.”

But here is a little tidbit:

It is thought that the Mary in the poem referred to Queen Mary I , 1516 – 1558, (daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) who tortured and killed about 280 Protestant religious dissenters who were trying to break away from the influence of the Pope and the Catholic Church.  According to one explanation on Wikipedia, the “garden” was the cemetery of those she had killed, silver bells and cockle shells represent the instruments of torture, and the pretty maids all in a row were the guillotines. This version is not certain. For example, she had many of the dissenters burned rather than guillotined.

 But here we are all panting for spring, lauding every hint of new growth and warmth, when, after a poor season for the local ski hill, in the middle of April we get a dump of snow in the hills.

It reminded me of all those cowboy shows where the old John Wayne type would sit on his horse and say to his sidekick, “Yup! Arrgh-h-h-h! Thar’s snow in them thar hills,” and then he probably spat a big gob of ‘baccy juice onto the ground.

Here is my very tame and very polite version of Contrary Mary’s poem:

Spring, Spring, you’re quite the thing,

Where is your warmness hiding?

With sunny heat, then snow so neat,

Our time we’re tired of biding.

And again, our contrary, waffling weatherman has given us hope by melting most of the snow and sending us a few rays of sunshine.

The maple tree, now “flowering,” soaks up the sun, looks at its choking bark, and says, “Take that, you clingy north-side moss.”