Catarrh

"DON'T. Don't touch me,"Dawn says as I hold my hands out to her as she descends the staircase.  I just wanted to show her how cold my hands were, inside gloves, working outside Sunday morning.

Lake (lousie) Louise-I saved the typo because it's apropos-is gone.  Clever Mother Nature has another distraction.  The thermometer pictured above is the morning temperature at 7:15 am.  It was 12 degrees earlier.

Clever me tries to trick Murphy and the forces of nature by filling the wood bin.  For the past two weeks I hand carry wood to the furnace in the basement.  Keeping warm on these spring nights is an arduous, hour long task starting with gathering kindling, hauling wood in the wheelbarrow, going to the barn for paper feed sacks and sorting through the back of the woodpile for something other than punk wood.

Clever me negates an attempt to distract onerous early spring weather events by putting the snow shovels in the lawn shed.

Contrast adds clarity, always.  Think you've got it bad?  There's always an article in a magazine or an online picture of someone, something that will be worse.  Today's contrast is a Yahoo picture of Superman Christopher Reeves with Lois Lane.  The caption says there's an new actress chosen for Clark Kent's attention.  Christopher Reeves is dead.  After a fall from a horse and a valiant effort to overcome paralysis, he buys the one way ticket to the other side.Get a life, Gavrillo.

Any complaint about frozen ground falls upon Gitchee Manitou's deaf  ears.  Forget planting onion sets in the third week of March, potatoes on April 1st, or corn on May 6th. This year it's  fantasy bordering upon psychosis.

 
Yup. That's a silver maple tree snoozing in the garden.There are eight 12X80 foot plots in the main part of the front field.  Five small herb gardens line the left side (the one with chives is closest to the foreground) and off in the far left distance is the squash garden.  Crop rotation is always a good idea to avoid soil borne pests, fungi and diseases caused by planting the same thing over and over and over.  It's hard to test frozen soil.

Somebody make a note to quit feeding that cat so many treats.

  I don't dwell on the multiplex theater of natural events.  When I'm mowing the front lawn and a tornado sends a truck cap past the library down the main street of Viola two miles away, I don't flinch until we get phone calls asking if we're all right.

Contrast, again adds clarity.  In Sedona we'd go for three months without seeing a puffy white cloud.  One day was like the next.  Our life was one Disney musical of happy tunes ( with Nico and The Velvet Underground singing "Waitin' To Die" in the background). 

I just want to get my hands in the dirt, puleeze.