As the granddaughter of teacher #1, daughter of teacher #2, wife of teacher #3, and mother of teacher #4, sometimes I waste a lot of time trying to approach my life in a half baked academic manner to please all of them. Like the last hour I wasted reading internet archives from 1971 about why farmers call spring snow, “poor man’s manure.”

What I learned was a lot of “experts” have different theories about “poor man’s manure,” and like to bandy about words including sulphur, nitric acid, soil saturation rates, metric tons, and ammonia while explaining their theories.

My conclusion? I have no idea why it helps the gardens, but am nonetheless very grateful that it is one manure I don’t have to spread myself. In fact, the snow, hail, and sleet this weekend gave me a wonderful excuse to stay inside and read a trashy book by the fire while all that manure was being spread.

This was much easier on the hands than my shovel had been, and when teacher #3 and #4 came in and found me wasting my time with said trashy book, I pretended to be having a lot of wise thoughts about manure, but really I was just thinking about the heroine of the Georgette Heyer regency romance I had clutched in my wonderfully warm and dry hands.