Don't Stop The Dance Music Don't
(Nature • )
Even before we were through licking our wounds from the longest stretch of frozen semi-South Texas winter in 10 years or more (four frigid days, but really they seemed like at least six), the relentless audacity of spring forced an end to all the whining.
While inspecting freeze damage to a rather newly planted Meyer lemon, and noting the total lack of damage to a Satsuma orange planted nearby at the same time, I came upon these rings of leaves sprouted from spring bulbs that obviously had been busy pushing through the ground in the midst of the frozenness, as some are 8 or 10 inches tall already. I’ve never known what these plants are, but they sport foot-high flower stalks filled with little white bell-shaped flowers that never fail to herald in the appropriate season.
If this is Jan. 13, then it must be spring, for all practical purposes. Certainly it’s time to get the tomato and pepper seed into pots (maybe eggplant, but I’m bored with eggplant). This will be year two of the quest to develop an open-pollinated beefsteak-type tomato that can handle our hot springs and summers and live through the various wilt maladies that plague ordinary tomatoes around here.
It’s time to haul off the mushy banana corms, vine stalks and other vegetation zapped by the cold, so that room may be made for new experimental plant oddities.
It’s time to get out the shovel, hoe and Mantis rototiller to extend the back garden beyond the pecan branch shadows.
It’s time to dig the blackberries out away from the fence and see if they’ll populate the upper riverbank. It’s time to plan a new herb garden near the kitchen.
It’s time to repair the myriad mechanical breakdowns that have gone unfixed due to inclemency or the winter doldrums.
It’s time to work off the fat and stand in the sun and watch the birds and yell at the dog. Spring waits for no man. Backsliding weather notwithstanding, it really is time.
→ B.Dunn, Jan 13, 2010, 10 48 am
