It Must Be Spring

 You know how I can tell? If you guessed robin’s tugging on worms or daffodils blooming or <please insert some other signs of spring I’ve failed to mention here>. If you guessed any of these you are sadly mistaken. I know it is spring because I need to mow the grass-- but my lawn got snowed on.

Of course, it wasn’t a lot of snow-- but that’s not my point. It’s also not my point that, resting on the laurels of the prior year’s successful lawn mower maintenance, I completely forgot to do any last fall. And here I am again, with my grass slowly greening, wondering if my mower will start...

Fortunately for me, there was some pre-season use of the mower-as-skidder, so all that dragging away of trimmed of tree limbs means that it hasn’t been that long since my mower has been powered up. It’s entirely possible that the next time the sun peeks out, my mower will fire right up.

This time of year, it’s a race to trim my grass before it gets as high as an elephant’s eye while avoiding rain-mixed-with-snow-showers. Or the ever-unfortunate “it’s a gloriously sunny day but I’ve got spring fever and am either 1) on a picnic; or 2) on a road trip to every nursery with in a day’s driving distance,  buying all the plants; or 3) both.”

A sure sign of spring around Casa Sume is the appearance of plants, seeds, straw bales—and usually in that bass-ackwards order. After the impressive—sometimes frightening success—of last year’s Straw Bale Garden, I’m kind of chomping on the bit to get going again. I can’t wait to have my first plateful of tomato bruschetta—topped with fresh whole milk mozzarella and new basil. I may have already purchased a tiny little nibbin of a start of my new favorite heirloom tomato, “Kellogg’s Breakfast.” While I have yet to purchase the straw that will be Mrs. Kellogg’s new home, I’m having her keep me company in the house. She has already grown to three times her height at time of purchase and I think it’s because she likes bingeing on Netflix with me...

Annie isn’t sure if a tomato on the couch is A GOOD IDEA