Weird Weather

Today was one of the strangest days in what's so far been a very strange spring season. I awakened about 5 this morning to the booming sound of high winds - a cold front was coming through. When I got up, it was gloomy and getting steadily darker. While eating my breakfast, I had the misfortune to glance out the window - it was snowing. Like blazes. It looked like the kind of wind-driven, blizzardy snow squalls we usually have here in December. It was a bizarre sight to look out at the crabapple in full bloom, at all the tulips, narcissus and violets and see something like that! We had squalls off and on all morning. I kept throwing middle fingers up into the air, but the cats were delighted. Snowflakes apparently ROCK, and my housework was accompanied by the sounds of the cats pounding on the sliding door, smacking at the flakes as they hit the patio. I'm glad someone was happy about it - it sure as hell wasn't me.........

For Love of Sweet Peas

I began spring planting today, and the first thing to go in was my beloved sweet peas - 10 varieties all told. I must have sweet peas, the more the better. On offer this season: 'Streamer Chocolate', 'King Size Navy Blue', 'Rhapsody in Blue', 'Horizon Mixed', 'Tall Mixed', 'Mollie Rilestone', 'Nellie Viner', 'Zinfandel', 'Blue Ripple' and my all-time favorite, 'April in Paris'. 'April' is without a doubt the most fragrant sweet pea I've ever known, and it's lovely to look at, too. A bicolor, it's vanilla cream with a lilac-colored edge. I won a blue ribbon in horticulture at a flower show a few years ago for this sweet pea. In fact, some of my garden club were so infatuated with it that we grew it for our club hort project last year.

My love of sweet peas led indirectly to an opportunity to have a brief conversation with the late illustrator Tasha Tudor. In the summer of 2002, I attended a "Day With Tasha Tudor" (or something like that) in Vermont, at the Adams Family Farm. The big event of the day was afternoon tea with Tasha herself. There was a reception line, and there she sat (she was beginning to be frail by then) with a huge bouquet of flawless white sweet peas. When my turn came, I admired her sweet peas and said that mine were just beginning to bloom at home. She smiled and said how much she loved the flower, and asked me how many varieties I planted. I don't often get worked up over the great and famous (unless they do something asinine, of course), but I have to say, that was a thrill for me. And all because of a love of sweet peas.......

The First Real Rainy Day of Spring

We've been a tad on the dry side the last couple of weeks in my region. The unbelievably hot weather over the weekend helped fuel the outbreak of a number of brush fires, and when it's been breezy, dust devils could be seen whirling across the road. So I was grateful for the promised rain that fell this morning. A pause this afternoon allowed me to go out and do a few necessary tasks, and now it's begun to rain again - this time with occasional rumbles and mutters of thunder; the first of the season. I used to be terrified of thunderstorms as a child, but not this kind - the deep, almost imperceptible drumroll that your ear picks up at intervals. A favorite children's book of mine, in describing a first spring thunderstorm, referred to the sound as "the good-natured roar of a well-fed lion". Well put. And a comforting, comfortable sound when you're indoors with a cup of tea.....

The Rites - and Wrongs - of Spring

The last part of last week was a headlong leap into summer here in western NY - both Friday and Saturday we reached a high of 86 degrees, which broke a record each day. As you might imagine, it kick-started everything into growth and/or bloom, and the yard is beginning to have spots of color everywhere. Most of the minor bulbs have come and gone; however, glory-of-the-snow and striped squills are flourishing. Now the hyacinths and daffodils are beginning to burst into glory, and the forsythia is opening as well. Seeing the landscape change day by day, running around outdoors pruning, cleaning and seeing who's coming on next are all cherished rites of early spring that are a tonic after a long, mean northern winter. Spring isn't all beer and skittles, however. Some things can be utterly and absolutely wrong - even when you're doing something that seems so right. Case in point - Friday night I yanked the cover off the gas grill in high anticipation of the season's first cookout, and got a nasty shock. Upon opening the lid, I was confronted with a mouse nest - no, wait: a mouse condominium - about the size of a 6" flowerpot! Mercifully, it was absent any tenants, but my word - I was not expecting that. After gingerly removing the offending object and doing some requisite cleaning, the cookout went off without a hitch. I did take the liberty of dumping the mouse exhaust that I found during cleaning onto the adjacent flowerbed; I figured, what the heck - manure is manure, big or little. It certainly can't hurt.......