How times change! When I was little, NH houses all had an outdoor thermometer, much like the one in this Flickr photo by Églantine.
Neither the many hotels where we’ve stayed this month, nor the charming apartment in North Oxford that we are housesitting now has any such thing as an outdoor thermometer that you can check from inside before dressing to go outside. But that’s ok, because if I want to know the current outdoor temperature in Oxford, it’s on my Google homepage.
Our outdoor thermometer was a source of great joy when winter started ending. The very first morning that the mercury (remember mercury?) climbed above 32, my mother would let us four kids run outside in our woolly bathrobes and long flannel pjs! We had to wear boots but we did not have to wear our coats as we celebrated the family’s springtime ritual, jumping up and down on all the soon to be melted snow.