so what dont you like about spring?

Each and every season brings with it some things, predictable things, that make you roll your eyes, shake your head and hold your nose. So, after all my rhapsodizing about the coming of this season, let me turn to spring's shortcomings. No, no, I'm not going to gripe about the weather. For one thing it is quite pleasant, but even if it wasn't, we know spring is always finicky, sometimes cold, sometimes wet. If you want something else, you need to move out of south central Wisconsin, because sometimes cold, sometimes wet is what we have here and frankly, unless it gets extreme, this is what the growing season needs.

Okay, but spring's yukky moments -- let's get back to those. What am I thinking of? 

Well, one spring ritual is the tracking of ants. They want to form homesteads, preferably in our house. April is the time when they march right in and search out the food sources for their ant villages. Some of the ants are so small that you dont really notice them. Until you sit down to breakfast and open the jar of honey and find a whole bunch of them swimming in goo. You have to be vigilant and discourage these guys from setting up shop right in your food pantry. So today we vacuum and I clean out the honey jar and still I track down a handful of those little buggers -- underneath the place-mat. This will continue for the month. Eventually they will go away, but for now, it's us against them.

Then there is the porch. As you may have noticed, we have screens on three sides. The porch is also a resting place to 4 cats (though never at the same time as they are not exactly best buds). This means that during the cold season -- late autumn, all of winter, early spring -- every rain shower hitting the ground on the outside, every ramble of a cat, every gust of wind, is going to bring in dirt. Before we can even think about taking a meal outside, that porch has to be scrubbed, wiped down, vacuumed -- all of it. With buckets of soapy water, a powerful vacuum cleaner and not a small amount of stamina. Hateful task, but it has to be done and I set out to do that today. 

Okay -- those are spring woes, far outnumbered by spring treasures. [Looking ahead, I can list summer woes -- mosquitoes, for sure, and over-air-conditioned interiors. Fall woes? Wasps and yellow jackets, and the frost that wipes out all your annuals. Annoying!] 

Ah, but those spring treasures! Let's start with the morning exploration of the garden...

Breakfast? Still inside. Mornings are nippy and the porch is still dirty.

And then comes the ridiculously tedious porch cleaning. Ed asks -- can I help? But the offer comes too late and besides, I am too hell bent on being the martyr here, so I persevere alone.

Okay, good enough. Not that you can tell by glancing outside. Until the arrival of the annuals, the porch always looks rather naked. But at least it is reasonably grime-free.

And wouldn't you know it -- it's time to pick up the kids.

All those daffodils! What's not to like?? Oh, right. Porch cleaning. Ants in the house. And the kids would probably add -- the ladybug-like beetles! I must pick several dozen each day off the windows. Inside. And we have very tight windows. And still, they come in somehow. 

But let's end on a positive note. Look what's starting to bloom for us! Virginia Bluebells! To go with the blueberry muffins I baked today. April blues, of the good kind!

with love...