Lileks: Let us not speak of the great July 4th snowstorm

We believed. We actually believed. What is the matter with us?

April is irritable and moody; it has a reputation for being the start of the good warm times, and it really resents it. April's attitude is more or less a sullen teen who just doesn't feel like it, OK? Gah! Leave me alone (slammed door, loud music). Then the month offers a sheepish apology: Here's some 60s. We're good?

You might recall last Sunday, a day as kind and clement as this month can muster. At the garden store, the line was long: Excited gardeners had heaped bags of mulch on wobbly wheeled carts, people were buying green hoses and Vigoro, clerks were offering tips on grass seed: "Is the area sunny or shady?"

Well — uh — there's some sun, and then the sun, you know, moves, so then there's some shade. And of course at night it's all shade.

"Well, you'll want a sun-shade blend, then. This is the LawnMaster 3000 — it'll grow grass on a bowling ball in the basement."

Great! I'm going to go home and put the seed on my lawn.

"If that's what you want, but this only works on a bowling ball in the basement."

When I got home, there was a big box on the steps: my new gazebo, ready for assembly. When it was up, I strung those new retro vintage lights that look like they appeared over Thomas Edison's head when he had an idea. Spring! April! Listen closely, and you can hear the tulips pushing up through the dirt. You can hear geese in the distance, honking as they head back for another season of strutting around indifferently, defecating. Fire up the grill! Grill those brats. I swear I heard fireworks up the block.

A few hours later, the wind came. It picked up the gazebo and moved it 7 feet to the east.

A few hours later, the rain turned to snow. The snow was still there the next morning, like a friend from college passed out on your sofa.

Of course we felt stupid. When there's an unseasonably warm day in late November, no one thinks, "Well, that's it for fall! The trees should be greening up any second now." But give us a few gorgeous days in early April and we think winter's done.

Makes you want to google "Easter snow" just to see what's normal, but you don't — out of fear of what you'll find.