Saturday, March 11, 2006

Blatheskite on the Edge of Winter

It's 66 degrees right now, and the "official" start of Spring is a week from Monday. It's rather windy, and partly cloudy, but it's a nice day. I have three neighbor girls out in my backyard now playing with Lou and Boo. It reminds me of a poem my older-older brother Bob wrote (this is the only part I remember)

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz
I wonder where my daughter is
She's outside playing on the swing
I'll bet she's glad that God made Spring
And so's her Mom; because for weeks
She's had to listen to cries and shrieks
Like, "Let's go play" but Mom says "Nay,
We've had three feet of snow today."

The girls are thrilled to be outside. This morning they helped me pick up gravel out of the front yard (thrown there by my snowthrower). We also picked up the dog's old, gross, moldy toys out of the back yard, so now both yards are nice and clean and I owe each girl five bucks.

Carl and I debated about whether we should take the snowthrower attachment off the tractor. I really want to because that will bring us even closer to Spring. Yet I hesitate because by the middle of next week the weather will have cooled significantly and it may snow. So we're going to wait until the end of March, when Carl plans to take a couple days off. I want to rent a thatcherizer attachment and an aerator for the tractor and give the yard a real good cleaning. We've lived here 9.5 years and the yard's never had a good cleaning. Once I get the yard cleaned I plan to lay down a bunch of new seed, and a couple weeks after that I'll fertilize. I hate using chemical fertilizers, but oh, well. The "thatch as natural fertilizer" method isn't working, so I'm going to try a new approach.

Yesterday I took Judah for a walk on the rail trails, and I noticed some of the trees are starting to bud. The silver maple trees had tightly curled leaves at the tips of their branches, and I noticed other trees whose twig tips were turning from grey to white. Here at home my lilac bushes are just starting to bud, and I have tiny little iris leaves poking up. Spring is trying to make its presence felt. It's now 67 degrees.

Spring on the edge of winter. Iowa is waking up from it's long slumber and getting ready for planting season. Soon I'll have to hitch up the rototiller and plow my garden. And my family members will appreciate the irony of this year's newest garden addition.

Strawberries.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

:) Yes, it was spring today in Illinois, too. Tomorrow may be winter again, but you'll never convince my crocus of that! Even my scilla siberica is beginning to bloom. *very happy*

Strawberries?? mmmmmmmmmmmmm

7:47 PM  
Blogger Trillian said...

my dad has a similar poem he always recites this time of year, "Spring has sprung, the grass has riz
I wonder where the flowers is"

8:59 PM  

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