in the wind

I’m back in the car. Driving the red hot lover. Just to give you an idea – we started the day with mid fifties and proceeded downwards. I had an early morning appointment and I swear, in the time of the drive, I felt like I had gone from spring to something other than spring.

There have been wind warnings. Correct predictions this time.

When I was getting out of the car, the red hot lover’s door swung slightly out (the wind!) and touched the great big SUV in the parking space next to mine. The driver was enraged. We studied carefully his black monster car and, satisfied that I hadn’t ripped it to shreds, he stalked off.

The wind scattered branches everywhere. A ripped tree on Old Middleton Road. Bascom Hill littered. Here’s a photo, from my office window (because it’s Monday, I'm hiding here for the day). Picking up fallen twigs.






Gales and gusts. Heard at night, continuing through the morning.
Are you taking the tomatoes outdoors for their constitutional? – I ask Ed before I leave in the morning. It seems so cold...
They haven’t been out for two days now... Ah, restless tomatoes. Maybe for an hour?
Who knows how to treat this delicate set of veggie infants...


The winds blows the petals down from the old crab. Ed tells me – take a picture, it looks like snow! Well yes, maybe, but snow of any kind – petal or otherwise – in April, feels seasonally misplaced.


But pretty. In a windy and cold sort of way.






No trees planted today, no progress anywhere at all. Reheated supper foods, windows closed inside, waiting for the wind to die down.

storms

I'm waiting for storms to create the usual havoc. Ed says – don't fret,  the forecasters can’t get it right. Still, the air is warm and unsettled. And windy.

Hello, fire department.

Are you issuing burn permits today?

(Ha ha ha ha ha....) No.

So we wait for the storms.







When in the morning, the sky looks rather benign, we dig a hole for one more fruit tree – a cherry. We want to fool it into thinking it’s got a good home, with good soil. So we dig extra hard, extra deep. And of course, just as I decide the hole will do, I strike a boulder.

As one commenter pointed out, yard work, of the overly ambitious kind, can strip you silly of any last bit of energy.Yesterday I may have thought  -- nothing's impossible! Let's get it out! Today I think -- leave the damn rock alone. The tree goes in and what happens thereafter is out of my hands. Watch out for the boulder, roots! Make sure you make your way around it!



The stormy weather keeps us locked into a band of warm air. In the afternoon, Ed takes a book outside (because he has taxes to do). I sit with him at the picnic table and survey the perfectness of our spring flower mix.







Life is good. You have to think that. The spring colors tell you that any complaints are to be shelved for another time, another season.


Even as by evening (yes, not until then) the rains come. We have friends and family for Sunday dinner. I can certainly hear the howl off the wind outside, but by now my attention is on what's inside. On the food. On the company. You know. The important stuff.