Weekend report.

1) I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to post on Father's Day yesterday, but I hope all you dads had a good one. It was a great opportunity to tell Dad Jokes™ without reprisal. You know who you are. (And who you are is PL Woodstock.) 

My late dad had a great sense of humor in terms of getting and enjoying jokes, but he could not tell a joke for beans. He either started laughing before getting to the punchline, or he forgot part of the setup and had to backtrack, or he felt he had to explain the joke in case you didn't get it (but you did). Well, he was omnicompetent otherwise, so not being Shecky Dad did not rise to the level of a character weakness. I miss him. 

2) Last Wednesday, McDonald's beloved shake-enjoying blob Grimace celebrated his 53rd birthday by throwing out the first pitch at Citi Field. Since then the Beloved Mets have won five games in a row. Fans are calling this the Grimace Era. Plans for a Grimace statue have been discussed. It could stand next to the Seaver statue outside the park.

I'm not saying that there's any connection to the winning streak. After all, the games have been at home against the woeful Mariners and the struggling Padres. But maybe…

None of this would have happened if Grimace had not changed his ways, from the evil four-armed milk shake glutton to Ronald McDonald's two-armed dopey purple pal. Recovery works! 

I would like to see if we could sign Grimace as a bullpen coach. Maybe get some of the others involved. Mayor McCheese could help calm things down in the front office, where they've been getting frantic as the trade deadline gets closer. Hamburglar could work as the base running coach. He's an expert in steals. 

But no Ronald. We’ve had enough clowns.

3) Yesterday I took some Windex to the glass-top table on the porch. Not the first time this spring. I couldn't believe how thick the layer of pollen on it was. It was like pond scum. You would need a paint scraper to write "Wash Me" on it.

If you live in the northeast United States and you think this is a bad allergy season, you are right. But you are not entitled to compensation. 

May calling.

It's been a rainy and very buggy May, but I'm still glad I'm not freezing out there anymore. I still have not put away my winter coat, which hangs on the rack by the door. I don't trust this weather. 

But as I say, buggy as hell, with many skeeter bites and gnat encounters already. I caught some yellow jackets up to no good. Every year they find some place on the house they've never nested before, and proceed to nest there. This year it was under the second-story gutter. Well, I and my hose took care of them hive turkeys. 

I am a Cat 5 hurricane on wasps' nests. 

Been a really great year for the creepy-crawlies too, like these ninjas, rappeling from the trees:

"I'm going to land in your hair!"

On that note, I had the world's smallest grasshopper land on me, playing "My Heart Bleeds for You" on his world's smallest Cricket-in-Times-Square violin: 

I guess it's been good for the birds, though. And on that note, the dog and I got a couple of visitors while sitting on the porch a few days ago. I have seen plenty of birds perch on the porch rail, but these two were flying all around the porch itself. I thought we were getting dive-bombed. 

Well, turns out they were house hunters, and now every evening we see this: 

This has been going on for the better part of the week. I've had to hose off the planks under their preferred bedroom, but otherwise they are ideal tenants -- for squatters. I'm thinking it's their house now; I may have to move. 

Finally, big ups to the highway department on this one: 

To be fair, it's on a dead-end street. On the other hand, I've seen one driver fly through it recently. And on the other other hand (may I borrow yours?), the taxes we pay around here should guarantee concierge service for our road signs. 

It's for the boids, I tell ya! 

Recipe for disaster.

Springtime seems like a much better season to start eating healthy than New Year's. Spring produce is arriving in the stores. The weather is warming, the sun is shining, the days are longer, all bringing thoughts of outdoor activities and beach bods. 

What happens at New Year's? You make a desultory resolution in the dark and cold, surrounded by leftover cookies and candy from Christmas. Yeah, that's got a chance of working.

Of course, just because it's spring doesn't mean the food is going to be awesome. 

I found a recipe in a spring-themed store handout that caught my eye, and I couldn't wait to try it. It was for marinated London broil served with a strawberry-rhubarb salsa. Unfortunately I did have to wait to try it, as there was no rhubarb available for a few weeks yet. 

There were a few things about this recipe I dug. For one, the salsa reminded me of the orange salsa I make with chicken, a recipe that's been a winner in the family for decades. Several of the same ingredients. And strawberries and rhubarb are just made for each other. Who doesn't like strawberry-rhubarb pie? Communists, that's who. 

Furthermore, I was enticed by the marinade recipe and method recommended. London broil can easily be tough as a catcher's mitt, but this was a method I had not tried, pan-seared in cast-iron and finished in the broiler. 

The recipe was a lot of work, including pounding the hell out of the steak and marinating it for a day, blanching the rhubarb, chopping up a dozen things, but I figured in the time and made it for Sunday dinner. It made a lovely presentation. Then we dined. 

The salsa tasted like a lot of nothing with a little strawberry, and the London broil was tough enough to use for a catcher's mitt. 

Where did I go wrong? It's unclear. It may be that I left the meat in the broiler half a minute too long, and that was enough to ruin it. Or maybe it wasn't the time of spring to get the really good rhubarb, the stuff that doesn't taste like sour grass. Possibly the fault was not mine; I've worked on recipe text in books and magazines for decades, and I can tell you that sometimes space requirements lead to leaving out a few tips and tricks, things that might make the difference for the home cook, things the professional recipe writer might not think are important but are. It happens. 

Finally, it's an often-lamented problem with healthy eating that produce is always a little uneven, as are other fresh ingredients lauded by the health pushers. But Doritos? Twinkies? Fig Newtons? They are exactly the same every time. It's hard to argue with success.  

Sprung.

As I noted, and you know if you're in this hemisphere along with most of the population, spring has arrived. And that means hope! Dreams! Young love! And WORK WORK WORK.

Yesterday I was in the giant houseware store, which I'll call Loam Depot because I was buying mulch and rocks. Rocks! When you're a kid you think rocks just happen. They're not something you buy. They're all over. Why spend money on rocks? Why torture the poor suspension (yours and the car's) with a load of rocks? And why buy mulch when you can mow over leaves and make it?

I know, I know. I don't care why. It just is. Spring comes and my un-mulched areas look like crap. As for the rocks, like most people in the 'burbs whose mailbox is on the devil's strip twixt sidewalk and road, I am not content to just let the mailbox post stand in dirt. But I am not so foolish as to think something planted in primo dog zone would survive. Once one dog hits the spot they all want to, and there's no plant alive that can withstand that kind of barrage. Some people cover the ground at the base of the post with bricks or mulch, and some use decorative pebbles, like moi. I use red ones. They match the mulch. 

My dad was a great one for landscaping, and he absolutely 100% did not pass that love down to me. I envy people like him, people who love gardening and tending the lawn and all the other things that make the property look dandy. They get exercise and fresh air and have more to show to the world for the effort than sweaty gym clothes. I like growing individual plants, but nothing more than I can grow in a pot, and that includes grape tomatoes and bell peppers. I cannot stand the idea of turning a large plot of earth, shoving in seeds, then fighting off deer and rabbits and bugs all summer. Unless I can develop a plant that produces Krugerrands, I think I'm just not going to maintain the motivation necessary. 

Today, though, is one of those days I have to buckle down and get some things done. Putting down some tick-murdering poison along the border of the property, for example -- one of the ways we keep the dog tickless. Killing weeds in walkways and other places plants don't belong. Washing the cars -- I feel confident that the big freeze is done, and there's no point in have a vehicle that looks like a pretzel. 

I guess that shows just how close to nature I am, that my spring endeavors are all about cars and poison. Oh, and I got the grill going yesterday, so that's propane for burning meat. I'm a one-man Anti-UN Environmental Programme. And for that, at least, I am proud. 

As I look back on today's blog entry, I realize I've covered this ground in years gone by. And that's what spring is -- covering the same old ground, year after year. With mulch.

Springshots.

Ah, spring! What joy! How well the great poet Chaucer put it: 

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, 

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, 

And bathed every veyne in swich licóur 

Of which vertú engendred is the flour; 

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne...

Yeah, dude. Righteous.

You gotta love spring, if only because winter sucks so much. Yeah, the bugs are back, and some of the birds make a lot of noise, and some of the neighbors make a lot of noise, but it's okay. Why, I saw a pileated woodpecker the other day, not twenty feet away! Almost fainted with excitement. 

The bird was camera-shy, alas, but I offer these simple pictures of spring in her splendor. 

Okay, so this doesn't look like much. But when I see long, dead grass strands under my deck, I know what it means...

Construction time for the Robins again. 

The blooms look so wonderful that I hope we don't get snow in May again this year. Kills flowers dead.

The dogwood's already losing its petals. Lazy, that's what I call it. Well, let sleeping dogwoods lie. 

The maples are finally unfurling their leaves. Baby steps, maples. 

This tree always looks great. Except the year we got a late blizzard and it had so many leaves up already that the weight tore down several limbs. But it bounced back after a decade or so. Can't kill this guy.

And finally, daffodils. Maybe my favorite flower.
You forget the bulb is there and suddenly: Bing! I'm back!

The sunlight colors always look like hope. 

Talking with the bugs.

I've had some discussions with the bugs lately, and I must say they have not been very satisfying. We have been unable to reach an accommodation. Steps have now been taken. 

The gnats, for one thing, have been much more poorly behaved this year than in the last couple of years. I suspect that it is because the spring started very wet and turned very dry, and for some reason this created an opportunity for them to get going in earnest. The backyard has been almost a no-fly-zone because of their insistence on getting in my face. 

Me: Get out of my face, gnats.

Gnats: Make us.

Me: Why are you hanging around me? You're not drinking my blood like those other flying pests. What do you want?

Gnats: To drive you insane by going in various orifices in your deliciously moist and salty face. 

Me: Doing a good job at it. 

I would have been willing to concede the yard to them for the time being, but Izzy the hairball dog wants to go back there. Worse, he gets into the tall grass edging the property, and you know what that means. I pulled three ticks off him the other day, one of which I'm pretty sure was a deer tick. If it bit him it would die (we use Simparica Trio) but there's a good chance it would wander off him and onto me or my wife, and abracadabra! Lyme disease. 

I squished one tick in a facial tissue, but it kept squirming.

Tick: You can't kill me! I am mighty!

Me: Say hello to Davy Jones. [FLUSH]

The ticks freaked my wife out, and I was dispatched to the backyard to spray Triazicide all over the place. In years past it has worked to make tick attacks less common and seems to keep the gnats down too. Sorry, bugs; you brought it on yourselves.

Izzy likes to just hang out on the porch when the weather is nice, and it has been quite nice. Unfortunately the wasps are busy looking for places to open up their Branch Office of Hell, and they keep hanging around. I mean, I know I'm a sweetheart, but do they have to hover around me like I'm a rose? You can't swat them like flies; it just makes them mad. I have plenty of Raid to knock out any nests, but what if I'm minding my business with the puppy? An errant shot would be bad for the dog. Are they going to ruin whatever's left of my spring?

But then, my sainted bug-hating wife gave me this.

Zevo makes a line of anti-bug stuff that's safe around children and dogs. I'm not the kind of guy who buys organic or worries that a moment's exposure to pesticide is what will kill my dog ten years later. I am however the kind of guy who knows my dog will go right after the most dangerous thing present. because he's a dog. In fact, he found the scent of this can so appealing before I'd even used it, he wanted to chew on it. The products may be safe, but I'm pretty sure chewing on a pressurized can is not. 

Anyway, I got to test the spray just minutes after it arrived in the mail. A fat ol' yellow jacket came buzzing me on the porch. I whipped out the Zevo and fired. One smooth shot, a thin but concentrated line, knocked the flying schmuck out of the sky. It lay on the porch like it suddenly remembered it had a splitting hangover.

YJ: What... what was that? 

Me: There's a new sheriff in town. 

YJ: You're the guy who tries to stop us with hairspray. 

Me: That was then. 

Sadly, Zevo is not an instant kill product. The wasp got up, determined to hector me again, and I nailed it a second time. Then it flew off, never to return, and hopefully to go die somewhere else. Zevo's wasp spray ingredients are cornmint and rosemary essential oils, and unnamed soap ingredients, so although it claims to be deadly, I have my doubts. But it got the aerial-hole gone, and left the porch smelling like a pricey bodywash.  

So feel free to talk to the local bugs, and make sure to tell them who's boss. They may be venomous, and may have numbers, but we have all kinds of toxic crap and we're not afraid to use it. Well, I'm not.

Butterfly.

Butterflies are free! Bumblebees, three for $1.

I saw this majestic butterfly the other morning. It was so large I was sure it would fly into my face if I disturbed it, but I'd hoped it would stay still long enough for the photo. 

I'm enjoying spring, or at least I keep telling myself how much more I like it than winter. But the gnats are getting quite rude, and I've already donated a pint to the Mosquito Annual Blood Drive. Now it turns out we have poison ivy among the bordering weeds, for the first time in all the years I've been here. 

In my mind I'm renaming the seasons; instead of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter I will say Itch, Burn, Mold, and Shatter.

So yesterday morning I stopped at Home Depot and got a big ol' jug of weed killer, one that specifically lists poison ivy and poison oak on the front. The cashier asks, "Does this kill poison ivy?" I said if not I'd be back for something stronger. Agent Orange, perhaps, or napalm. 

I couldn't use it yet, though. Saturday turned into a day-long rainout, but not without advantages. It appeared that my wicked neighbor, the one that will be arrested by the feds, was going to have his annual cookout and pool-opening party. How do I know? Because his wife's sister was over the day before to help clean the house. I don't think they let her stay for the party. Well, every family is weird in its own way, and some are weirder than others. 

Anyway, it looks like the party was a bust (one car showed up). 

On the whole, though, the weather has been pleasant enough this May, and helpful to my new tree. A friend asked if I've been watering it once a week, as the nurseries suggest, and I pointed out that I haven't had to bother since we've had lakes of rain this month. 

One last thing: About that huge butterfly?

So I lied a little. Cute, though, ain't he?

Moms!!!!!!!

Happy Mother's Day to all those moms out there! 

My mom was a pretty tough lady, God rest her soul, and indeed she had to be. There were many times we kids were threatened with death, severe violence, or abandonment at a Dickensian orphanage. In my opinion, a child that doesn't get that kind of thing from his mom (the threats, not the follow-through) is not trying hard enough. Or his mom is a perfect saint. 

I won't go into the usual blah blah blah about the history of Mother's Day and how the creator regretted her creation -- you can read that anywhere today. For that matter, many mothers regret their creations from time to time. Instead, I wanted to point out the other holidays or special commemorations that occur around Mother's Day. 

Now, it's no coincidence I'm sure that Lilac Sunday occurs on the second Sunday of May every year, just like Mother's Day. Or that Iris Day is celebrated on May 8, which is always close to Mother's Day if not smack on it. Well, maybe it is a coincidence, but with all the flowers bought for moms on this day, I doubt it. I may not smell a rat, but I can smell a flower.

National Hospital Week and National Women's Health Week both start today, which is an obvious tie-in to Mother's Day. For most of us, Mom is our #1 healthcare provider in our early years, and so we worry about her own health. There seems to be a connection. For that matter, May 8 is World Red Cross Day. And who gave you more bandages that Mom? 

Also, May 8 is National Outdoor Intercourse Day, and that's one way to become a mom. I wonder if anyone goes around claiming that he loves camping because Mom and Dad conceived him in Yosemite? Wouldn't surprise me. 

May 8 is also supposed to be National No Socks Day, a day when we parade around sans socks. This would seem to be another rite-of-spring type event, but wait! May 9 is Lost Sock Memorial Day! Now we start to see the connection. Moms do most of the laundry even in these enlightened times; No Socks Day may just be a means to cover the fact that so many socks, tragically, have been lost. And so it's no surprise that May 10 is Clean Up Your Room Day, when kids are supposed to get all the crap cleaned out and straightened up, and undoubtedly many lost socks will be found. Do it for Mom, children!

Whether on purpose or by happenstance, there are many reasons this week to think about our mothers and all the misery through which we put them. Get your mom something nice, if you can. And if, like mine, your mom has gone to her rest -- well, with rotten kids like us, she probably earned it, and God bless her. 

Spring! Time to kill.

Spring is here! We're almost done with temperatures in the thirties and the risk of snow! We've had snow in May around these parts, so I don't discount the possibility. However.

Time to get the rubber mats off the porch steps -- walk at your own risk, suckas! Time to figure out which of last summer's gorgeous plants have up and died. And time to KILL KILL KILL!

What am I planning to kill? Better to ask what am I NOT planning to kill. Mwa ah ah!

1) Weeds. Weeds on the lawn. Weeds on the walkway. Weeds in the cracks on the driveway. Weeds on the sidewalk. Weeds in the woodpile. Weeds on my chinny chin chin. All the weeds. Dead! 

2) Bugs. Wasps' nests. Ants' nests. Termites' nests. Individual spiders. Worms. Flies. Ticks. Gnats. Fleas. Dead!

3) Groundhogs. Kill or chase away. I'm tired of their sinkholes in the lawn. I have purchased some smokers that will send them running or kill them. Kill them DEAD! 

Ah, but even in the depth of this murderous depravity is the spark of life. My dead tree is gone, the stump finally removed, and yesterday I put a young red maple in its place. It looked so large in the SUV, so small on the lawn near its larger mates. I planted it with tenderness and care. I will mind it and bring it to root in its new home. 

And if it dies, I'm spraying the lawn with Agent Orange and calling it a day. Paint it green! Pave the Earth!

Construction debris.

Once again, the robins have arrived, and are starting construction on a new house. 

I don't mind that at all -- it's more of a problem for them, really, because after the eggs are laid, every time we go in the yard with the dogs, mom flies off in a panic and then peeps angrily from a tree until we go away. Look, lady, I'm sorry, but I pay the mortgage here, not you!

They also leave a lot of construction debris around. 

I saw a male robin working on a nest in a neighbor's yard. The red-breasted henpecked hubby had a mouth full of dead grass, and was no doubt waiting to be told where to put it. "Try it on that branch... no, wait, put it in the maple tree... no, no, too much light. Move it over to the gable. Oh, no, forget that. How about the dogwood? Higher, higher… Why are you looking at me like that, Ralph?"

You'd think that robins mate for life, with all that going on. The male robin does seem to understand one of the crucial rules of marriage:

But in fact, robins usually don't mate for life, although they might get together again if they find themselves hanging out in the same place the next year. In any event, for the male, it's a case like any second marriage -- the triumph of hope over experience. 

I'll keep tabs on the robins as the spring moves on. Frankly, I'd like to hear Mrs. Robin yelling at her husband the way she yells at me. But I think they don't like to air their dirty laundry outside the nest.  

Spring fever.

Big, enormous plus sides to spring: 

Daffodils in bloom, trees slowly unfurling leaves, grass turning green once more.

Similarly, downsides: 

I woke up Monday with a crushing headache. Worst I ever had, or at least since the last time I attended 2-for-1 Tequila Night at the Fallout Bar. (Or something like that. Anyway, it was back when I would have loved a 2-for-1 booze night of any kind.) It was the kind of headache that makes you think Hmm, one of the classic stroke symptoms is described as "worst headache I ever had." And: At my age it won't be nice and slay me right off; it will leave me blind and paralyzed and in a home for thirty years. Because I can catastrophize anything. 

It woke me up about five a.m., and that woke up the dogs, and somehow I managed to get them outside and back. But the agony continued through three Advil Liqui-Gels, two arthritis-strength Tylenol, an ice pack, two shots per nostril of Afrin, and two pseudoephedrine. They eventually tamed it enough for me to get into a hot shower, as hot as I could stand it, where steam did the rest. I was tired and unfocused all day, though. (I think I had also slept funny -- not funny ha-ha -- because my neck hurt a lot, which of course I attributed to encephalitis until it went away.) 

AccuWeather said the air quality was excellent, using some standard I can't imagine. Excellent for pollinating plants, I suppose. For humans with hay fever, not so hot.

That was only half the spring-related trauma, though. My wife had been brushing out large economy-size heap o' fuzz Tralfaz, and a day later found a big ol' tick in her hair. She doesn't go rubbing her head in the weeds, or at least hides it from me if she does, so I believe she was right in saying it must have come in on the dog and transferred to her.

Her reaction to finding a tick was what you might expect. 

After smashing the beast and sending it down the toilet, I assured her that it was not a Lyme-bearing deer tick, because this tick was very large and those are very small. Somehow she did not find that as reassuring as one might have hoped.

Naturally, Fazzy had a new flea and tick collar on before the hour was out. 

So, on we go with spring, and it's soggy as an underwater Oldsmobile out there this morning. I'm glad I feel okay today, and I'm glad it wasn't a stroke. You hate to get to the age where you write a phrase like "I'm glad it wasn't a stroke," but that's what happens if you live long enough, I suppose. 

So long, tree.

Well, the tree I tried to save almost three years ago died anyway. It was a fruitless task for my fruitless plum, a thundercloud, that looked magnificent in the spring and gorgeous in the summer. Last year it only sprouted a few leaves, and by autumn I knew it was dead. 

I brought that tree home myself, in the back of my car, barely more than a sapling, from a garden center that has since closed. It took root and grew where previous trees had failed. Alas, I didn't know that they only live for about twenty years, one of the shortest life spans of cultivated trees, and it had been growing a few years when I got it. In the end there was nothing I could do. The maples nearby continue to thrive, but for the plum, its time was up. 

I only have a hatchet and some saws, and this was no job for that. Time to call in the pros. They dispatched the branches first, then pulled the stump out with truck and chain, like popping a cork. 

Sad to see it go -- by far the most successful thing I've ever planted. What's got two brown thumbs and kills plants? This guy [points to self]. Every spring when it began to flower I'd think I planted that! But alas, no more. It is gone. 

Except for the stump. They said they had to come back for it. Well, I guess they will, since I haven't paid them yet.

Now I have to figure out what to do to fill the hole. I've already had a maple and a dogwood die in that spot, each within one year. 

Maybe I can get a redwood sapling. It would annoy the neighbors. It'd take a century, but it would annoy the neighbors! 

Resentment.

It's St. Joseph's feast day again! St. Joseph is my confirmation saint, and a very good one to keep an eye on, especially for those of us going through Lent. 

As I've noted before, we don't know much about St. Joseph, but we are confident that he fulfilled the mission of his life uprightly, and therefore that he didn't have resentments about the way things turned out. He certainly could have. There he is, perhaps the most decent man on earth, and he has to devote his life to a mission he did not choose, fleeing to Egypt, fleeing back from Egypt, hearing terrifying prophecies, losing Jesus in the temple, etc. But when he was told to do something by God, he did it without arguing. You can't say that for most of the prophets and saints.

I was thinking about resentments this week, and how giving them up has been a major work of my adulthood. This week I was watching a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz on Ascension Presents about having to do things we don't like, and how this often leads to the same ol' place: resentment. The point that stuck with me seemed quite psychologically sound: 

Resentment is that anger, that frustration, solidified. It's not a living thing. Anger is a living thing; frustration is a living thing; grief is a living thing. Resentment is a frozen thing. It's something ... frozen in time. And it can't move. It can't grow. It's not a living thing. 

While strong and negative feelings from unhappy events can change and pass away, in other words, resentment can't, and that's why it's so awfully destructive.

So, for the rest of Lent, I think it'd be good for me to unfreeze my resentments and let them pass along the way, and stop new ones from forming like dirty hunks of ice on the side of the road. Hey, spring is almost here -- time to end the freezing and start new life. 

Pots o' dirt.

I have four pots o' dirt on the porch now, each with seeds, trying again to shame Spring into getting things going. I think it's starting to work; yesterday the high was 71!

Two of the pots stand astride the stairs leading to the porch. These contain bell pepper seeds, which turn into big leafy plants all summer. They look great, green and lively and dramatic. And then you get delicious red bell peppers. If they grow at all, that is. If not, those guys who bag the dirt for Scotts Miracle-Gro will hear from me. I haven't forgotten your persecution of an employee for engaging in a legal activity in his own home, Scotts. Fail me and you'll be hearing from my lawyers.

On notice

The third large pot o' dirt contains seeds for grape tomatoes. We got a lot of good tomatoes out of that pot last year, but I made two mistakes -- I started late and I didn't get a tomato cage to tie up the plants. Tying them to the porch railings was a disaster. It lolled all over the place like a drunken green octopus. I got a cage yesterday that can stand in the pot and hold the plants up. Of course, the wind may blow it all over, pot and all, and I won't be able to sue Scotts for that.

The last pot o' dirt is the saddest. When our junior dog Nipper contracted lymphoma this winter, we made an appointment to take him to a vet in the next county that specializes in dog cancer treatment. Two days later we cancelled the appointment -- Nipper was too far gone. They were kind enough to send a condolence card with a little packet of forget-me-not seeds. I planted the flower seeds yesterday in honor of our little one, gone too soon. A good dog is never forgotten. 

Nipper, 2016–2021; forever young.

Come on Spring, you idiot!

Short post today; busy weekend, busy Easter. But I'm sure you'll find something of fascination below. (Note: Fascination not guaranteed.)

One of the weekend tasks was to try to shame the season of spring into action. Not that there was a lot of reason to complain; the mornings were gorgeous. The week ahead looks good, although I did wear the winter coat out with the dog this morning. 

My weekend plan was to get a jump on the spring projects and move things along. After all, Mets fans missed out on opening weekend thanks to the Chinese Death Virus, so I had to do something.

What I did was, put down some of that mulch I bought. I put it around the trees. I also wanted to hammer in some fertilizer spikes for trees and shrubs, but found that the ground was still frozen about three inches down. Those spikes are just compressed fertilizer; they do not penetrate hard surfaces well. So I abandoned that task, although the mulch is nice.

Closer to the front, the lovely and talented Mrs. K wanted to replace some mums, which take all summer to pop up and last a brief time, with shrubs. I got some little firs, but I did not put them in yet. There's an issue with symmetry that needs to be resolved. See, it's not obvious, but one end of the porch is a little longer than the other, and she would like that to not be obvious. While we puzzle this out, the firs remain in pots on the porch.

Also in pot news: I planted my bell pepper seeds in pots. Too early for this zone, but I don't care. I was late with my cherry tomatoes last year and we missed out on some late harvest. Get moving, spring!

I oughtn't to tempt fate, though. Here's a scene from last May 9:

Another 2020 joy

Latest snowfall I've ever seen here. Killed all the daffodil and rhododendron blooms. Went away fast, but the damage was done. 

What will 2021 bring? I don't know, but I'm giving it the gimlet eye. Prove me wrong, spring!

Snowzimandius.

I met a traveller from a muddy place,

Who said—"One small and footless step of thin ice 

Rests in the yard. . . . Near it lies the face,

Of mud reversed from snow a visage lies, whose grimace,

And icy lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which lasted, stamped once on a snowman's noggin,

The hand that crafted, on the snowman's head;

Within the mire, these words appear:

My name is Snowzymandias, King of Toboggan!;

Look on my Works, ye Frozen, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that minuscule print, alone and bare

The lone and yellow grass stretch far away."

Sprang ahead.

Pardon me, but I'm writing as if I'm under the influence of some substance. It is all about lack of sleep, though. 

Friday night we had wind gusts of up to 50 mph. Large dog Tralfaz is not afraid of thunder or fireworks, but strong winds freak him out. I stayed downstairs with him overnight to comfort him. That worked brilliantly. I slept about four and a half hours, not in a row. He was whimpering, whining, and wanted to go out a number of times. 

What made it worse was I had a meeting to attend Saturday morning at eight, and three projects for work in the afternoon. And on top of it all, I lost an hour of sleep Saturday night due to Springing Ahead for daylight savings time. I hate springing ahead.

When I was a young man about town, I could go on low sleep for a few days in a row with no major problems. Of course, some of the symptoms of sleep deprivation, like memory issues and trouble with thinking and concentration, were me as I was in college anyway, so the difference would have been hard to notice. Now it actually matters. 

So forgive me for being brief today, but I'm trying to avoid using my laptop as a pillow. 

When will we end the daylight savings time menace? I can't do anything about the wind, and I can't use narcotics on the dog, but there's no reason we should still be dealing with this spring ahead/fall behind nonsense. It's a relic from an earlier time, and I say it's spinach and the hell with it. 

Spring pictures.

Okay, enough with the depressing things for a bit. Here are some pictures I got while walking around. The National Geographic people may not come hammering at my door to buy them, but hey, I write novels, not picture books.

Here we have an example of the concrete worker's art, a planter apparently awaiting whatever plant will adorn it for the summer.

I guess they put the pebbles around to keep it upright, but I think it looks a little silly. Tell you the truth, the first thing I thought of that it looked like a spittoon for the Thing from the Fantastic Four.

"Reed, will you please speak to Ben?  He keeps missing the spittoon and now there are pebbles all over the floor!"

"Ben, why are you spitting so much?"

"Because, Reed... It's SLOBBERIN' TIME!"

Speaking of elegant concrete sculpture, we also have this content and well-dressed chap, although a bit worse for weather wear. Yes, allow me to present Monsieur Grenouille Faux;

Fake frogs are okay, but with all the rain we had, we had enough of the real thing around here. In fact, the same day Nipper and I passed M. G. Faux in the morning, we encountered Monsieur Grenouille la Vraie in the evening:

I wonder if M. Faux and M. la Vraie have met?

We've also had plenty of wildflowers, some of which don't suck. I mean, most wildflowers are more weed than flower. This one was okay.

What that always puts me in mind of is "Fields of People" by an underrated English group, the Move. A friend of mine got me into their stuff long after their heyday had passed -- also after the heyday of Electric Light Orchestra, actually, which is what the Move morphed into. "Fields of People" is a cover of a song by Ars Nova. I like "Fields of People" a lot ("Fields of people... there's no such thing as a weed...") but I used to have more tolerance for hippie stuff. Now my home is a tambourine-free zone. Anyway, it's a fun song, from the album Shazam, but unless you really dig sitar music, bail after the main song portion. (Side note: The lead vocal by Carl Wayne was recorded on the street, the rest in the studio.)

Finally, we have a horse-drawn hay rake that has been turned into a planter.

I love this thing. I admit that I had to look up olde tyme farm equipment to find out what it was; I've explained this city slicker's knowledge of farming to you in the past. I think they family is a little optimistic; I don't know what's growing in the planter but it's overwhelmed by the machine itself. Still, I wouldn't care. I love old stuff and I'd probably just sit on the seat, wearing an Amish hat, chewing straw, whittlin', and making wise country remarks to people like an idiot all day. Good thing I don't own it.

That's what I've been seeing around this spring; how's it with you?

So it snowed.

Yep, woke up Saturday, May 9, to snow on the ground.

It was the coldest May 9 in New York City since 1891. That far back there was only one borough in the city; the Brooklyn Bridge was only eight years old; the Statue of Liberty had been in place for only five years.

My neighbor had opened his pool on Friday, which my wife found hilarious. Less so the fact that the weather flat-out killed the blooms on our rhododendrons. They were on their way out, but still. They'd had a spectacular spring, and it was sad to see it come to an end by lunchtime Saturday.

By that time every flake had melted. But the fact that we had snow, and enough to stick, more than a week into May made it a headline event. You might expect that to happen in Canada, or even in colder and snowier spots in New York like Buffalo, but this was a first for me and the lovely Mrs. Key. I had to pull my woolly cap and scarf back out of storage. One of the kids on the block had left a Wham-O Snowboogie out on the lawn, which looked a little silly by the afternoon.

It did inspire your musical friend here with a song:

There's no boogie like Snowboogie
Like no boogie I know
Everything about it is astoundin'
Not the type that comes out of your nose
It'll take you down the side of mountains
And leave you countin'
Fingers and toes....

There's no people like snow people; they smile when they are froze.

The robins have built a nest in the back deck again, and every time I go back there, with or without the dogs, Mrs. Robin flies off and peeps angrily at us from a tree. Yesterday I told her to get her butt back on the eggs before they froze, but she didn't listen. Robins only listen to Batman.

The dogs had fun, of course, being very hairy canines and inclined to enjoy cold-weather sports. I was even able to frolic with junior varsity dog Nipper in the backyard, throwing snowballs for him to catch, or try to. It did, however, result in the meme below:

I'm telling you, man -- this stuff ain't normal.

Workin' at the car wash, girl.

I was quite proud of myself for washing the salt off the cars.

This was no small feat, if you've followed the progress of my achin' back from physical therapy to hospitalization to the current day. I thought it was taking a chance, but all the local car washes are still closed due to Governor Corleone and the Chinese Virus of Death, and I couldn't bear to see the cars look like lumpy pretzels in May, so the time had come.

Sunday was a gorgeous day, so I got to work. I wanted to make a good job of it. First I vacuumed out all the dog hair, little rocks, etc. from the interiors and cleaned inside, getting all the windows. Then outside I splashed, soaped, splashed again, and wiped down in a frantic hurry, aiming to leave no streaks. Finally, I cleaned all the exterior windows again with glass cleaner to ensure clarity. Lookin' good!

I was stiff the next day, but that good kind of muscle stiffness that says "I accomplished something," not the bad kind of back pain that says, "Is the surgeon available?"

The worst thing about the job was the music. Every house around me has hooked up a sound system in the back deck. So far they have not started vying for supremacy but I think that'll happen this summer. As it was, I only had to hear the neighbor's choice and it sucked. I know it's common that once you reach thirty, then forty, and so on, to think that the kids today listen to crap, but it is absolutely crap these days.

Don't take my word for it; use any search engine and ask "Why does modern music suck?" and get enough results to read and watch for the rest of the day. The usual suspects are all there and all true -- musicians valued for looks over talent; Auto-Tune voices that make everyone sound like a computer singing through a kazoo; stunted and shriveled range of musical notes and song subjects; moronic and uninspired lyrics; sophisticated but unimaginative use of synthesized sounds. To me, it comes to this: Pop musicians used to want to write a song with a great hook that would get people to remember the song; now they just write the hook and nothing else. One snippet of melody, repeated eight hundred times. Loud rhythm that never varies, so one may presumably dance with one's arms in the air as if one simply did not care. This is music for Club Lobotomy, not a lazy Sunday afternoon, and yet there we were. Worse, the family all went inside and left me with their stupid music.

I guess there's probably only one song that really goes with car washing, though -- yes, the immortal Rose Royce and their megahit "Car Wash"!

Not really my kind of music either, but compared to modern pop it's Beethoven.

The song "Car Wash" was of course from the soundtrack to the 1976 comedy film Car Wash. I don't know if you've ever seen it. I don't know if I have, either. I mean, yes, but it was years after the release and I had to be talked into it. Of course, with a cast that included Ivan Dixon, Richard Pryor, Irwin Corey, George Carlin, Garrett Morris, and Danny DeVito, it probably wasn't too hard for me to be talked into it, but I know we were drunk at the time. I remember liking it but maybe it was the beer. That was a long time ago and I haven't seen it since.

Maybe it was actually D.C. Cab we saw, come to think of it. In fact, I know it was. I think I saw Car Wash some other time.

Kids, don't drink and watch movies. You forget what you saw.

Anyway, I'm very glad the cars are clean and winter salt is gone, even if we have nowhere to go. Oh, and P.S.: Friday night it's supposed to rain and the temperatures are supposed to drop to freezing, so there's a chance the town will be salting the roads again. In which case, I may have to put a car in drive, lie down in the driveway, and run myself over.