And Just Like That! Snap!

 

And Just Like That! Snap! 

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We sing the praises and glories of Spring. Really, we ought to be more careful. Spring ought to come printed with a warning label, beware, danger of erratic behavior.

Spring is warm and wanton with promise one day, and cruel and cold, withholding favors the next day, spurning all pleading and imploring with an imperious frosty demeanor.

Like many things, Spring also has a use-by date and just like that, go to sleep one night much like any other, waken and summer has arrived.

The sun follows a whole new trajectory across the sky. Leo is attaching the sun screen over the section of buckets from which I grow parts of the garden when prefer a bit of shade, a bit of cool. Peas, spinach, a variety of lettuces and leafy cabbages.

I fold my wool sweaters around lavender sachets and store them in a bin. My merino long-sleeved tees sulk in another bin. My bare skinned arms exhibit mild shock. The faithful electric heater, plugged into service around Thanksgiving, is stored in the farthest corner of the bodega. Winter bedding displaced summer bedding from another storage bin, summer now airing on the clothesline, soaking up sunshine. 

Birds are on the move. We are not on a designated flyway of any sort that I’ve noticed, so it is subtle. One day I realize I haven’t seen that bird with feathery coloring similar to a robin for a while. A tenate scoops in and lands on a branch of the dragon tree outside my “computer window” and it seems like an old friend, road weary and slightly disreputable, suitcase in hand, just knocked on the door. (A tenate is a type of blackbird, another scavenger, and I admire them, the fun-lovers.)

Mosquitoes and flies proliferate. Is it because my arms are bare that I notice there seem to be more? Or is it because it is summer and the winter occasional pest has morphed into the summer swarm?

Ah, yes, summer has moved from the verge to presence. Here in our little community the few people who are snow-birds are gradually, if reluctantly, preparing to leave. The Covid plague nterrupted the usual to-ing and fro-ing. Yet there is still movement.

While some prepare to leave, in the next week or two, others will show up, for a few weeks, for longer.

Yesterday, for the first time in years, and I can say “years” with a straight face, we converged around the fountain at Tom and Janet’s for a social gathering, in number, a mere eleven. I didn’t stay long, after all, I have a reputation to uphold, as the most anti-social of all on the ranch. Yet, I felt a surge of goodness, looking around at all the mostly-masked half-faces.

Today I intend to plant the remainder of my buckets. I have a decision to make. I have more seeds than I have empty buckets. I’m in a quandary. Do I buy more buckets? Do I put away some seeds for later?

Another quandary. What about the bread I made yesterday? Do I throw it away? Make a new batch? Figure a way to use it despite it being a disaster? How to use it? Me, I, who make the best bread, a master baker, created a disaster. Yes, the bread batch turned into a brick. I could varnish it for a doorstop. I could nail on a handle and use it for a curling stone, if only we had a curling rink.

But, hey, it is summer so it doesn’t matter. In summer life is 99.97% perfect. I’ll plant what I can today. I’ll either find more five-gallon buckets. Or I won’t. I’ll either throw out my brick bread or make capirotada, a Mexican bread pudding.

It is summer. And, it doesn’t matter. What I do absolutely doesn’t matter for I am filled with summer warmth. For all I know the night is an upside down navy-blue bowl and the day is a yellow mango, carried about on the back of leaf-cutter ants, trudging down the crooked path to their underground nest. It could be so. It might be so. What do I know?

It is summer. And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 3, 2022

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