I had plans for today, really I did, and they did not include watching snow fall then watching snow melt. Snow hasn’t been on the agenda since April. But sometimes plans don’t work out.

The day began a little after 5 a.m. I woke to soft “whump” noises and the metallic clanking of the fuel oil line. These are familiar sounds.

I was instantly alert: Bump or Spike—the young bull moose hanging about lately—was probably munching on the fireweed just out the back door. It’s a great moosey snack spot.

I sat up in bed and saw nothing but white outside the loft window. Yesterday, everything outside that window was green.

The hill out back.

My heart sank. Snow—and no mere dusting. Whump! That was snow sliding off the house roof onto the shed roof. Clank! That was snow falling from a willow onto the fuel line.

At another time of year—say, anytime from October through March—my heart might leap with joy at the beauty of it. But not today. Just a few days ago, I planted out the seedlings I’d been growing in my house for the past 4–6 weeks. I’d just moved the pots and buckets with annuals out to the deck. Was this snow in the weather forecast? Should I have known? Beats me. I rarely look at weather forecasts. It’s been 50–60+ degrees all through May. I felt late getting things outside because I waited as long as I did. June 1 is the standard for-sure-safe-to-plant-now date. That was yesterday.

I moved the buckets and containers with annuals outside only a few days ago.

It snowed for the next four or five hours, sometimes lightly, sometimes with giant, wet blobs. Despite the weather, I heard one of the neighbor robins singing. A pair nests here year after year, rearing their young in our strawberry/raspberry patch, where they eat berries and insects and peck at the soaker hose to open larger holes and get more water. This year’s nest is under the deck.

And still the robin sings.

Green leaves drooped and looked glassy. Willows bent—more than a few broke—under the weight of the wet snow.

Not weeping willows, but perhaps willows weeping.

I was distracted all day, wondering how the seedlings in the garden were faring—especially the zucs, squash, and pumpkins in the (not so) warm beds, and marveling at the drama and spectacle of it all. It really is a wonder that plants and animals survive the sometimes extreme conditions here: A fire is burning up the Kenai Peninsula; a volcano is erupting on the Alaska Peninsula, and we’ve got snow on June 2nd, after an unusually warm month, during which plants flowered early. (I’ll take the snow over the fire and volcano, thankyouverymuch.)

Several days ago, I walked through the tundra noting the gazillion tiny blueberry flowers and the white buds of Labrador tea ready to burst open. Now what? Will we have blueberries this year? I wanted to go out and see if the blueberry flowers had all been knocked off the plants or frozen, but there was still too much snow to know.

By midday, the snow stopped falling. That’s when I stopped watching it fall and began to watch it melt. Gradually, the pots of annuals on the deck became exposed. The plants were flattened, but still vibrant green, not dead. Not nipped as they get in the fall when it frosts. They looked better than the leaves on the willows and aspens.

Annuals flattened, but not dead. I don’t think.

Several times, I ventured out to the garden and yard to see what I could see. I had forgotten that yesterday, after working in the strawberries, I noted how cold it was and put plastic down over the plants in the warm beds. Hooray! I wish I’d remembered that at 5:30 this morning.

Not the right plastic, not well placed–but it’s there!

It seems to have done some good! Oh, plants are flattened, and not everything survived, but some plants did.

It lives!

On the other hand, the broccoli, kale, cabbage, collards, bok choi, etc. don’t look so good. Given the rebounding I’ve watched today, I won’t write them off entirely just yet, but they weren’t protected, and things don’t look good in that bed. On the bright side of this, however, is the fact that I have a good many spares, warm, snug, and growing strong here in the house. As usual, I never thinned the starts, and when it came time to plant out, I carefully separated the partners that shared a container, and I have a bunch of leftovers.

The native wildflowers that I’ve been cultivating for several years were, like everything else, flattened, but they’re not dead, and every time I check, they’ve perked up a bit more. Just Friday, I explained to my mother that this is the first year this flower bed really looked nice. Figures, eh?

Many of the blooms are still there, and some of the arnica stalks are starting to stand up. Go, flowers!

And perhaps best of all, when I was finally able to survey the damage to the blueberries on the tundra, I discovered this:

Hooray! Blueberry flowers survived!

I had a hard time getting a picture of the blueberry flowers: The sun was shining, and the snow was melting fast. Tiny branches sprang up as snow fell away, and the pictures had blurry streaks.

How’s that for bouncing back?