Saturday Morning Confusion

About five years ago I swore I would never do anything again that required a #2 pencil. But there I was, Saturday morning, taking yet another test to get more letters after my name. If I'm ever asked to give a commencement address, I'm going to tell the graduates to invest in #2 pencils. They're going to need them the rest of their lives.

And it was a day I would have enjoyed much more had I been outside. The temperatures continue to reach very un-January levels, which has only added to the floral confusion I spoke of before. Now the cherry trees are starting to show pink, which is a shame. Another hard frost will come, and nothing is sadder than cherry blossoms too soon in drifts on the ground.

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow

A. E. Housman

Popcorn-Worthy

I've tried various State of the Union Drinking games in the last few years (although in 2005 I probably would have been better off mainlining heroin). And lately I've avoided listening to any of The Smirking Putz's speeches. But I may have to tune in and stay sober this Tuesday night, if only to enjoy the prospect of his addressing a Congress that isn't in his pocket. It will be a joy to see Speaker Pelosi standing behind him (although if she restrains herself from using that gavel on him she's a better woman than I). And somehow I don't expect the enthusiastic ovations he's been used to in the past.

And, if we're lucky, we'll be spared an encore of this:



Heroin, anyone?

The Joys of Midwinter

Yes I know it really isn't midwinter, but here in the South we usually get our coldest temperatures around mid-January. I say usually because this year has been unseasonably warm, as it has in most of the country. Despite a rather wussy snow/ice event yesterday, it's still been easy on the heating bills this year. Which has led to some confusion among the flora. This afternoon I saw one of these outside my front door:



What a silly little crocus. So I proceded to check things out around the front and sure enough, the daffodils are poking up, too. Needless to say, the forsythia is already in bloom (nourished by the remains of Maude, The World's Most Affectionate Cat).

All very lovely and unexpected in mid-January. But winter is not over, and another snow/ice "event" is forecast for Sunday evening. And even it shocks the crocuses, it's good for the lilacs. They need at least one good covering of solid precipitation in the winter to bloom profusely in the Spring. On April 15, to be exact.

Three months from now we won't remember winter, but in the mean time:

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens