That Time Of Year

If I'm reading the signs right, spring is here.  Bouquets of daffodils are scattered all over the yards.  The almond tree was beaten ragged by the storms, but the plum and peach are covered in blossoms.  Back in the day, Perez Prado put out a jazzy mambo song called "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White;" same colors, different fruit.

The first Baby Blue-Eyes appeared yesterday, tiny flowers smaller than the surrounding clover.  Yes, I do look for clover with four leaves.  The forsythia is popping with bright yellow flowers on the deck.

The notice to renew registration on the truck has arrived, the girls are cycling through estrus, and the surest sign of all - the annual outbreak of spring fever has struck.  Facing the busiest season of all, I've come down with lassitude and enervation.  Knowing what's coming, I do nothing.  Looking here, there, and everywhere at all the things that need doing before the heat of summer, the best I've done so far is make lists.  To avoid doing something more productive, Bess and I went out several times yesterday to play Pick-Up-Sticks in the yard.  The bracken fern is beginning to grow and I'll need to weed-eat it soon.  Fallen branches, debris from the log splitter and chainsaw, and all manner of bark pieces litter the ground around the woodpile.  All that would play havoc with the weed-eater or mower, so cleaning the area wasn't exactly an exercise in futility, and it got us out of the house.

Thinking I really should go downstairs to work on The Project in the afternoon, of course I turned the other way and walked out the front door.  "Whoa, what is that?!"  I stood stock-still and watched to make sure those two fireballs in the sky weren't moving, because they sure looked like something from outer space.  It didn't help that the sun appeared like a humongous explosion on the horizon.  Reassured that the earth was safe from aliens, Bess and I went on with the business of doing nothing.  It's that time of year.