Weather and Volunteers

I would just like to take a moment to note that it is almost the end of May and, according to the thermometer on my front porch, it is 45 fucking degrees fahrenheit. That means that for once, the temperature outside and the temperature inside are roughly the same, or at least I think they are: I'm not going to look at the inside thermostat because it might make me cry. I am sitting here wearing a heavy fleece pullover and a blanket wrapped around my legs. I knew there was a reason that Mr. Bill slept in the bed with me all night and a couple of times attempted to get under the covers. This is ridiculous. This is absurd. Also, I am cold and my left hand keeps going a little numb on the mouse.

My daughter A is a weather nerd. That is to say, she is in no way nerdy at all, ever, no, she is the epitome of post modern coolness (who reads this blog occasionally,) except that she genuinely enjoys the weather channel, tracks the weather online and has been known to say, unironically, "Hey! Let me just check the doppler!" She has many theories about the current weather situation and she will explain them at some length. The other day she asked me if I knew why the weather was being so weird. "George W. Bush?" I asked, "It must be his fault." Do not crack jokes about such serious subjects as the weather with A. "No." she snapped, "It's because the seasons have speeded up and instead of having four distinct seasons, we're cycling rapidly through all of them on a monthly basis!" Ooooookay. The weather has apparently become bipolar. I still blame George W. Bush.

Meanwhile, the top half of my vegetable garden still is resolutely refusing to grow and I'm concerned. But to make up for that, I have a few odd volunteers in odd places: there's a sunflower in the lawn, not far from the vegetable garden, which is already much taller than any of the sunflowers I actually planted, and there are two happy little squash-of-some-kind seedlings in completely random places in the back yard. I'm intensely curious to see what they turn into. I put a stake by the sunflower with a seed packet impaled on it so it wouldn't get mowed. I think I'm going to put the bent and rusted tomato cage that I rescued from the bushes on the grounds that it looks like a piece of sculpture (not, perhaps, a very good piece, but hey, it was free) around the squash and see if it turns into a gourd vine, which is the only thing it really could be, unless a seed from a piece of about to be grilled zucchini fell there and decided to become a plant. My yard is getting more interesting again.

When I found them the other day I started clearing some grass away from one in a helpful way. Everything I know about gardening I mostly learned from The Secret Garden, which I read and reread obsessively as a kid, and in which Mary Lenox, poor orphan in large mysterious Victorian house, teaches herself to garden by, basically, clearing leaves away from small plants. That seems to be all she does, and it works like a charm, leading, ultimately, to riches and joy. I have found that there's a little more to gardening than that, really, also, the riches and joy seem to be a bit delayed. Unfortunately, while I was clearing the squash in my best Victorian orphan way, Theo, who is a helpful if dimwitted dog, decided to give me a hand and started digging it up. I yelled at him and he desisted with a hurt and puzzled look. It's a tough call - Theo, after months of watching me hard at work, has decided that digging holes around the yard is Useful and Good and I hate to discourage him when you can see that he's just shining with virtue as he digs. He's not particularly discriminatory though: he dug up my African daisies twice and I have seen him eying the day lilies. If I could just teach him to only attack honeysuckle, morning glories and wild strawberries I would feel like Mary Lenox at the end of the book, but alas, I think that may be beyond his powers.