Super-Sunday-not

 Today is definitely not a Super Sunday.  For a Kansas gardener, it's a Mediocre Sunday, and if the gardener decides to curl up and find a good book, it could possibly become an Okay Sunday, maybe even a Fine Sunday, but at 7ºF outside at 12:00 p.m., it's not going to become a Super Sunday, football frenzy or not.  

I had been wanting one decent snow this winter, enough to make everything clean and smooth and white and I still haven't seen one.  What's on the ground now is just a little dusting, a little frosting on the prairie cake; just enough to need sweeping off the sidewalk but not enough to get out a shovel and struggle.  The primary dampening of my spirits, however are the result of the frigid temperatures.   We've had a mild winter, hardly a Zone 6 climate up until now, but yesterday somebody shut the freezer door and the temperatures plummeted alongside this dry snow.  More pertinently, there are some highs-in-the-teens and lows in the subzero temperatures predicted over the next 10 days, back to a true Zone 5 climate that we haven't seen in several years.  Last year at this time I was already clearing perennial beds on 55ºF afternoons.

For the record, I will watch the football game this evening, although I really don't know or care who I'll be rooting for.  Yes, it would be nice to see the long-suffering and local-to-me Kansas City Chiefs win another behind Mahome's spectacular passing accuracy and their daunting defense, but I also wouldn't mind watching 43 year old Tom Brady show Patrick the difference between how an old bull and a young bull approaches the field.  On the other hand, Brady was born in 1977, the year I graduated high school, so neither one is old enough to really appreciate the old bull and young bull joke genre that I'm alluding to.

Also for the record, yes, I cheated on these beautiful forced tulips that are currently in the middle of our kitchen table.  The local grocery store had these ensembles of glass, greenery, and glory for $9.99 the other day, priced low enough for even my miserly soul to consider worthy of a sawbuck.  Seven tulip bulbs to brighten Mrs. ProfessorRoush's Valentines day and keep me in her good graces, and then later I'll plant them in a pot with good soil and move them to the garden this summer.  I usually force a few bulbs on my own, but this year I just haven't found the urge or the time.  When these fade, however, I'm now inspired to go cut some forsythia and flowering almond branches to bring into the house and force into bloom.  Maybe the spring colors can provide us a Super Sunday later in February.