March On

spring blossom
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Everything is in bloom. There's a weeping cherry surrounded by daffodils up the street from me that is enough to make long dead Japanese poets take off their clothes and weep in joy; me, I just want to take pictures, although I'm not sure I can do it justice. But possibly my photo might just be better than my Xtreme spring haiku:

Cherry blossoms yeah
And daffodils too, wow, cool
Like, spring or something.

Just possibly, yes, a photo might be slightly better. If I was a long dead Japanese poet I might well not be a remembered one.

With all this spring stuff going on it is time to start gardening. This weekend it is not going to rain, which will be novel, and I am going to haul a whole lot of concrete blocks around so as to make an unsightly Victory Garden of raised beds in my front yard. Possibly the concrete blocks will get mosaiced eventually so as to make them less (or more, depending on your mosaic tolerance) hideous. Or not. But hopefully having them in the front yard will shame me into keeping the vegetable garden weeded and neat instead of letting it turn into the dry shambles of morning glories and grass that is the usual eventual fate of my vegetable gardens.

The backyard also needs work. Somebody hopeful and broke planted a few very small trees back there at one point, neglecting utterly to ponder upon the fact that the backyard is full of large trees already, and they brook no competition. The small trees are trying, but the odds are against them: the combination of almost total shade and three dogs is a bit much for anything to grow in except broken lawn furniture, which flourishes in that microclimate. However, they're blooming tinily, as shown here and staging a minuscule battle against the sea of mud, dogshit and shredded recycling that my backyard has scenically become. In 60 years they might even be 8 feet tall, which I will totally enjoy from my haiku writing coffin under the solarium.

But in the meantime, it's, like, all springy and shit. There are blossoms and pollen and most of the population of Asheville has red eyes and is sneezing. My friend Adam is back in the mountains (without my son, who has been apparently permanently seduced by those tricksy, traitorous, lights of Baltimore and seems to believe that basically starting his adult life is more fun than visiting his Mother. Imagine.) and promises to fix or replace my water heater, so that will be cool and I can stop changing out the towels and then visit fiery death upon the mold civilizations growing along the baseboard there. Hurrah, spring.