Spring and Color and, Whoa, Dude, Global Warming

Spring, or possibly summer, is here. The yellow of the forsythia is exactly the same yellow as the plastic tops of the sawhorses my brother generously gave me this weekend, so that when or if I ever have another big yard party, there can be many tables. The daffodils, whose yellow is more confrontational than the forsythia or the sawhorses, are out in full; there's a pretty little purple trumpety thing in my front garden that I have no clue what it is; and Fish is alive. Yes. The creatively named Fish, in his orange glory, is still alive in his sunken bathtub choked with drowned oak leaves and paint chips (I picked that tub up off the side of the road. The previous owner apparently had decided that painting it with latex house paint was a Good Idea. They were Wrong.) in a spring miracle of his own. Fish must be nearly 3 now; a 25 cent goldfish from Wal Mart that I dropped in the bathtub to keep the mosquito population down. God knows what he eats; I think I've fed him maybe twice in these years, but he lives on, growing to incredible size and lazily lurking under the surface.

The windows are open all day and all night; I retired a quilt or two off the bed and hauled out some T-shirts. I shaved my legs, twice, which means that yeah, summer is icumin in, loud sing cuckoo, also robin, hawk, assorted cardinals, a particularly vociferous mockingbird and god knows what all else outside my bedroom window. That would be one of the windows with a screen that Barbieri (RIP) and Mr. Bill chewed a hole in last summer. I would have been very happy if they had never figured out that nylon screen is no match for cat teeth, but alas, there's a hole in the screen by my head. This is unnerving, since I can occasionally read Mr. Bill's mind, and his mind has been known to say things like, "There's a nice fat mouse! I'll bring it to Mom! I'll just drop it on her head while she's sleeping and she'll be sooooooooo happy!"

All this would be just peachy keen-o, even despite the mouse possibility, except for the small yet worrisome fact that these lovely 75 and 80 degree days and balmy nights are taking place in the first two weeks of March. That just seems wrong. I can't quite bring myself to clear the leaves out of the flower garden (I am an economical and lazy gardener; why mulch your flower bed in the fall when the helpful oak tree overhead will do it for you for free?) or even take the plastic off the front windows. I can't believe that summer's here already, because this is not, after all, the deep South. This is the mountains, and we've been known to get killing frosts right up to Mother's Day. I looked in my garden journal to see when things bloomed last year, but unfortunately all that was noted was that I put in beans and tomato seedlings last year on April 24. Honestly there are times when I need a time machine just to go back a year or so and whap myself upside the head. Why would I ever even care when I put in tomatos last year? The blight kills them all every year anyway; it is impossible to grow decent tomatos in these here hills without a greenhouse. And last year I even did them in containers with sterile soil! They still sucked.

My gut is that we're about 2 weeks ahead of ourselves, and that the temperatures are unheard of. But, you know, that's not because of global warming! God no! Nothing we have done has altered the weather! Ignore Science and Pray, Motherfuckers! Also, build yourself a biodome that can withstand some serious ass kicking storms, because this stuff is cute & funny for only a very little while.