Mostly Wordless Wednesday: "Spring" (<-- those are great, big, honking air quotes there)

These were my crocuses as of Monday morning, the first morning of Spring, when I stepped out onto the porch to see Kiddo off to the school bus:

These were my crocuses as of *this* morning, the third morning of Spring, when I stepped out onto the porch to see Kiddo off to the school bus:

And these were my crocuses as of 4pm today, and I am really wishing that my computer had a function to adequately depict great, big, honking air quotes to put around the word Spring:

It is of small comfort when our local meteorologists cheerfully remind us that the official "snow season" (<-- more GBHAQ there) doesn't end for our area until June 1st.  Or that there was snow last year on Mother's Day.  Small, cold, white comfort indeed.

Mostly Wordless Wednesday... signs of Spring

The first (and only, thus far) bloom of the season!

Robins! (And cardinals, and sparrows, and lots and lots of other birdies, too!
Also, many squirrels and chipmunks frolicking about, driving our crazy cat even crazier...)

Sidewalk, chalked!

(A far more appealing sight to see than the hundreds and hundreds of worms that covered our walkway and driveway this morning, that slowly died and dried into shrively, crispy lines as the sun rose higher in the sky...)

I'm choosing to ignore the evil and gloomy weatherpersons who love to keep reminding us that we usually get snow "well into April" around here.  I'm also choosing to ignore the freezing cold mornings and the ridiculously low highs in our 10 day forecast.  I am choosing to believe that Spring, finally, has sprung!!

Hello Spring,

Goodbye Wintr!

Alllllllllllllllmost........

Almost unfurled...

Almost open...

Almost there...

Almost the very first bloom of Spring...

Taroo, Taroo, ta-ROAT

My dear friend Andy emailed me this after reading my whine about being a grouchy grump. It is a bit of an inside joke (well, I did tell y'all about Skeeter, the inside joke part just spirals off of that original story), but it made me laugh so I wanted to share.


And yes, I am feeling a bit less grumpy, hallelujah! I'm mostly just tired than anything, as opposed to tired and hormonally eeeeevil. (Goatlike, one might say....) I've told Hubby that I'm not waiting up for him tonight, but going to bed when the kiddo does. Hubby's softball team is playing in the semifinals of their league's tournament at 7:15, then if they win it's on to the final game in a doubleheadery sort of way. If they lose, he wouldn't be home before 9:00 and while normally, I wait for him to get home and then we eat dinner together, tonight, no way. Hubby was in agreement with this plan - I think he doesn't particularly want to see me at that hour in my mood! At least I got the front and side yards mowed (thunder started ominously rumbling before I could do the back) and took out my frustrations on some ginormous weeds as well as hacking back our Forsythia of Insanity. I have such a love-hate relationship with our forsythia bushes, which are the hardiest things, ever. I got them from a friend who was relandscaping her entire property. They'd been dug out and bagged in some garbage bags, then moved in a hot van and left on the side of the house for like a month, still in the bags and only occasionally watered, before we finally got around to planting them. Now, in the spring, I looooove my forsythia. It is the first thing to bloom besides my crocipetti (aka crocuses) and I always bring branches inside and force them even before they're blooming outside. But by midsummer? They grow in this psychotic frenzy and get gigantic and sprawly, no matter how severely we cut them back. Haaate that - the branches poke through the fence into the back yard and flop over to the side into our neighbors' property. When I was mowing that side of the yard today, I noticed that the leftmost bush was completely blocking the neighbors' access to the side of their house and back yard. I'm surprised they haven't hacked it down or at least (since they're very polite) asked us to cut it back, but I went to it with a vengeance. The forsythia retaliated with a vengeance as well, bitch-slapping me across my left side and tangling in my hair as I fought my way through the branches to a cutting point. Ow.

But forsythia trauma aside, I feel better about having accomplished that much yard work despite the crazy humidity and my bad mood. I cranked up A Chorus Line (the OBC) on my iPod and sang at the top of my lungs over the lawnmower. I was obviously loud enough that the mailman could hear me as he pulled up our block, because he turned onto our street during "Dance 10, Looks 3" and shot me a slightly more bemused look than usual. (Our poor mailman has encountered me out doing yard work with my iPod on more than once....)

For those of you who aren't show tune fans, here are the particular lyrics I was belting out to my audience of finches, cowbirds, butterflies, garter snakes and our lucky, lucky mailman:

Dance: ten; Looks; three.
And I'm still on unemployment,
Dancing for my own enjoyment.
That ain't it, kid. That ain't it, kid!

"Dance: ten; Looks; three,"
I'd like to die!
Left the theatre and
Called the doctor for
My appointment to buy

Tits and ass!
Bought myself a fancy pair.
Tightened up the derriere.
Did the nose with it, all that goes with it!

Tits and ass!
Had the bingo-bongos done.
Suddenly I'm getting national tours!
Tits and ass won't get you jobs
Unless they're yours.

Didn't cost a fortune neither.
Didn't hurt my sex life either.

Flat and sassy,
I would get the strays and losers.
Beggars really can't be choosers.
That ain't it, kid. That ain't it, kid!

Fixed the chassis.
"How do you do!"
Life turned into an endless medley of
"Gee, it had to be you!"
Why?

Tits and ass!
Where the cupboard once was bare
Now you knock and someone's there.
You have got 'em, hey.
Top to bottom, hey.

It's a gas!
Just a dash of silicone.
Shake your new maracas and you're fine!
Tits and ass can change your life.
They sure changed mine!

Have it all done - honey, take my word.
Grab a cab, c'mon, see the wizard on
Park and Seventy-Third
For

Tits and ass!
Orchestra or balcony.
What they want is whatcha see.
Keep the best of you, do the rest of you.

Pits or class - I have never seen it fail.
Debutante or chorus girl or wife.

Tits and ass,
Yes, tits and ass
Have changed my life!

Now for the complete picture, you have to imagine my yard work ensemble: scrungy, once-was-orange tank top (with bra showing more often than not), faded, bleach-spotted brown capri pants - actually, I believe technically they're cropped gauchos, not capris - white crew socks, ratty old sneakers, filthy green and white (at least once, long ago, they were white) gardening gloves - the rubber-and-fabric kind that always make my hands smell like a balloon for hours even with much scrubbing - iPod and gigantic sunglasses, dripping with sweat and bearing red marks up my one side from calf to cheek from the forsythia that looked like I'd been flogging myself. Hair curling out every which way from the humidity, too. I was looking hawt. I tried to restrain myself, as I was in public and all, but I believe the occasional shimmy escaped, too (behind the screen of my lawn mower, but still). That's the danger of playing show tunes on one's iPod in public - one cannot help but dance as well as sing along. Well, if one is me, at any rate.

Anyhow, thanks for my goat, Andy! I'm off to change Swimmy's water, then make a lasagna for dinner (that'll reheat well for Hubby whenever he gets home) and crash on the couch with a book while the kiddo eats.

Crocipetti!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (tm the Beat Cats)

Woo-hooooo! This morning when I walked the perimeter of the house where I'd planted over a hundred crocus bulbs a few years ago, I saw nothing that even vaguely resembled a crocus leaf popping up through the mulch. BUT.... when I got home this afternoon, what caught my eye? Check it out!

Yes, that's right - THREE crocus flowers* right around the front step, plus a few other green leaves that look quite crocusy in biology. Add that to the return of our local heron (aka the pteradactyl - you should hear this thing fly over our back yard with his giant, whoomp-whoomp-whoomping wings) to the pond behind our house and the mourning doves who have once again staked out a spot under one of our pear trees (note to self: buy birdseed for the feeder) and it is undeniable, forecast or not: Spring has sprung!

* did you see how I avoided pluralizing crocus so cleverly there? A group of my friends and I decided a few years back that we are going to call multiple crocus flowers crocipetti. So, there you have it... though one of these days, I really ought to investigate what the actual pluralization is for crocus....