Spring this year has come in like a lion, which is unusual. Hot, really hot, like 80 degrees in the shade hot and the nights aren't much cooler. Now a week or more into it, Spring is doing its thing like a good little season. Here we go with a typical cold and gloomy Midwestern spring day, just in time for the break when we could be hosing winter's grime off the car or pumping air into the bike tires.
Still, the early warmth has done its damage. The grass is growing and the trees are blooming. We may yet get frost, but nothing stops spring fever once it gets to rolling, and if you get down on your hands and knees and put your ear to the moss growing between the cracks do you know what you'll hear?
Wake up sleepy heads! The moss doesn't care about the sun or the rain or the frost, it just goes on about its business of being soft and green. It's hard to get the feet moving under your body when the mornings are so cold, but the brisk air assures one thing. We won't be breaking a sweat raking the leaves that crept under bushes or pushing the mower through thickening lawns.
A day in the life; it's not very glamorous and the little things we have to remind ourselves to stop and notice, sometimes, in our trance, are too small to see. With a coffee cup I'm out wandering in the yard. I have pruners sticking out from my back pocket. The branches from my Twisted Filbert are laying in a small heap upon the deck because I'm saving them for a friend. There's a bucket of twigs sitting on the grass, has been for three days, and thinking it's time to chuck them on the fire, I lift it by the handle. There's a round depression on the lawn wear the bucket was, but the flattened blades are still green. I swing the bucket and hear a woozy little yelp.
“Corn founded, pimple headed niggitys!”
Great honking Canadian geese, it's the little man who lives in my garden. I should have known he was about, seeing all the weeds that have sprung up like...weeds. They're everywhere. In the lawn, in the mulch, in the brick pathway. I think the little man has a friend at the Burpee seed distribution center that sends him packets of their most virulent weeds. Sticky, stinky, stringy weeds. Nasty wee imps they are, spreading their foul seed. I guess that wouldn't be so bad in itself, but this little man who lives in my garden is just crude and ill tempered.
“Why're ye chopping up me humble abode now, ya fliberty pie eye? Gots a right to live, aye, I do, methinks I does! Away wit yer clackity scissors, those acootermints of death.” Toby comes running out of the house hearing all the racket. “Farg!” The little man ducks back into the twisted twigs inside of the bucket. Some mumbles, I'm guessing he's swearing and carrying on about the dog of whom he's frightened for some unknown reason. Well, he has a damp nose.
“He won't hurt you,” I shout, but I know it's no good. The little man will be hiding now for some time. Good, at least if he's in a bucket he won't be spreading disease over the expanse of my lawn. I can get some picking done and be ready for planting when winter's trespass over the spring is truly done.
Toby loses interest and chases a ball over the grass. The William Shakespeare mulberry gets caught by a wind gust and shrugs away, as if he's shying from my pruners. “Another day, then,” I say to him, bending over the flower garden to pluck out a dandelion. Toby brings me his ball. “Here you go, Tob; go get it.”
Still, the early warmth has done its damage. The grass is growing and the trees are blooming. We may yet get frost, but nothing stops spring fever once it gets to rolling, and if you get down on your hands and knees and put your ear to the moss growing between the cracks do you know what you'll hear?
Wake up sleepy heads! The moss doesn't care about the sun or the rain or the frost, it just goes on about its business of being soft and green. It's hard to get the feet moving under your body when the mornings are so cold, but the brisk air assures one thing. We won't be breaking a sweat raking the leaves that crept under bushes or pushing the mower through thickening lawns.
A day in the life; it's not very glamorous and the little things we have to remind ourselves to stop and notice, sometimes, in our trance, are too small to see. With a coffee cup I'm out wandering in the yard. I have pruners sticking out from my back pocket. The branches from my Twisted Filbert are laying in a small heap upon the deck because I'm saving them for a friend. There's a bucket of twigs sitting on the grass, has been for three days, and thinking it's time to chuck them on the fire, I lift it by the handle. There's a round depression on the lawn wear the bucket was, but the flattened blades are still green. I swing the bucket and hear a woozy little yelp.
“Corn founded, pimple headed niggitys!”
Great honking Canadian geese, it's the little man who lives in my garden. I should have known he was about, seeing all the weeds that have sprung up like...weeds. They're everywhere. In the lawn, in the mulch, in the brick pathway. I think the little man has a friend at the Burpee seed distribution center that sends him packets of their most virulent weeds. Sticky, stinky, stringy weeds. Nasty wee imps they are, spreading their foul seed. I guess that wouldn't be so bad in itself, but this little man who lives in my garden is just crude and ill tempered.
“Why're ye chopping up me humble abode now, ya fliberty pie eye? Gots a right to live, aye, I do, methinks I does! Away wit yer clackity scissors, those acootermints of death.” Toby comes running out of the house hearing all the racket. “Farg!” The little man ducks back into the twisted twigs inside of the bucket. Some mumbles, I'm guessing he's swearing and carrying on about the dog of whom he's frightened for some unknown reason. Well, he has a damp nose.
“He won't hurt you,” I shout, but I know it's no good. The little man will be hiding now for some time. Good, at least if he's in a bucket he won't be spreading disease over the expanse of my lawn. I can get some picking done and be ready for planting when winter's trespass over the spring is truly done.
Toby loses interest and chases a ball over the grass. The William Shakespeare mulberry gets caught by a wind gust and shrugs away, as if he's shying from my pruners. “Another day, then,” I say to him, bending over the flower garden to pluck out a dandelion. Toby brings me his ball. “Here you go, Tob; go get it.”
7 comments:
ha. it would be better if everyone did not cut their grass at once...one day last week i thoguht my head was going to explode...
you've got a cranky neighbor that lives in a bucket. grow him some hops so he can brew tiny bottles of beer. then he can share them with Toby.
asparagus is popping up in my garden.
you're out and at it, eh, tom? well, i can't blame you. i was down your way the last two weeks and it was nearly unbearably hot, everything pushing full force into new life. today though it's cold here. i drove back roads and took in newly formed ice on rivers (again). sure has been confusing but you know what? the delay makes the arrival all the more sweet.
give that little guy a kick in the pants when you manage.
have fun:)
xo
erin
You love the smell of cut farts in the morning.
How lucky are you to have a wee (if disagreeable) Scotsman -- or would he be Irish? -- in your garden. Are you putting out bait?
I'd love to see your garden. Love the twisty tree, fairies live in it I'm sure. I wish I had your passion for gardening, mine's gone apeshit...I need several 'little men' with secateurs. Fancy a gig down under? I have a sit on mower?
Your Wee Man Has An English Cousin!
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