SPRING SUNDAY

Here in the Middle of the World the weather is unpredictable - not that this isn’t the case in most places. Mostly we have four months of Winter and four months of Summer, a month each of Spring and Fall....and two months of whatever.

Yesterday it was dark and raining and quite chilly. Today the sky has cleared and it is comfortably warm and sunny and breezy. So I decided to get off my ass and finally go for a walk, which I have not done in weeks. I immediately come upon a stranger and her young son canvassing for a petition to keep the nearby college students from parking all over the place. Her young son’s name is Gustav. He’s happy to be helping mom, blond hair and missing front tooth and all.

People on bicycles cruise by and I check out their outfits. Why the logos and uniforms?
Across the street children are goofing around on playground equipment and here comes an ice cream truck, preceded by the usual ringing musical sounds. These days, my inner mind wonders about those trucks. Some of them are a bit ragged and creepy.

The wild cherry in front of my apartment building seems to be bursting outwards like a fireworks explosion.

Flowers abound and mulch and extremely green grass. All of that yard work. I owned my own house once, when my daughter was in elementary school. I did most of the yard work. But my neighbor, Bill, was fanatical about his yard and it always appeared immaculate, as if maintained by a nursery. Mine by comparison was rough, somewhat unkempt and betraying a limited amount of interest by the homeowners. Still, one year Bill bought an exotic tree for the space near his front door and he offered to give me the dogwood that lived there. With his help we managed to free it from the earth (it must have been ten feet tall) and get it transplanted into a cozy nook near my front door. We had a drought that summer and every expert I spoke to told me the poor dogwood was doomed to die. I watered it religiously and tended to it like a second child and the sweet thing survived beautifully. It still lives on in that same spot tended, hopefully, by the present owners.