SPRING DREAMS

The rain is coming down again, folks---the streets are sluices, and for the second time in less than a week, we have the sop-up, mop-up going on downstairs. The basement absolutely flooded last Sunday night, with rivers and flows running all round the room. I spent all day Monday stomping on towels, throwing them sodden into the washer for a quick spin, then into the dryer, and back onto the floor, where I continued my best imitation of Lucy-in-the-wine-vat, treading those grapes. (Except my wardrobe was not nearly so fetchingly stylish---shorts and T vs. her charmingly-looped skirt and big hoop earrings).

NINE spinnings and NINE dryings, at five towels each, not to count the actual Clorox rinses and washings and dryings. It was quite a day, and I felt like I'd been to the Stair-climber class from Hell.

Good times.

Today, Chris is busy with the GULPER, and with all the anti-everything sprays---I couldn't find the thing last week, thus the towel-trauma. He's making great inroads (instreams?) in the puddles on this old weatherbeaten (in all senses) rug. When he runs the little wide flat end of the vacuum down a line of the floor, it leaves a clean-incised, pale track---I tried to think of what it reminded me of, and it came to me: Remember having a popsicle, and it was just about to drip and you'd suck on one side? That pale spot which followed is just like the lighter area where the water has been removed in a neat line.

I'm SO over this---I KNOW I longed for Autumn last year, but enough is ENOUGH. The wet and the cold and the tracked-in snow; the inches and feet of the stuff, beautiful for a while, then graying and clogged with melty-salt, and in one instance when the stores ran smack dab out of salt, Cat Litter---dark and crumbly and leaching into the snow like black pepper on grits.

I long for Spring so badly, I went in search of my own from past years: Looking out the kitchen window into the misty sunrise of the back garden:


Sitting on the patio in the Summer afternoon, with a glass of tea and a good book, glancing from time to time up into The Tree:

The uncovering of the great swathy-beds of ivy which are slowly covering the entire back yard, shiny and green:

Lush, fragrant herbs for the mere walkout and the picking:

And for one of these:

I'd tolerate several of these:

This one is from Mississippi, of course; she's six inches tall, and we had her bronzed.