I'll Take It!

This is how Spring arrives in Kansas; not slowly, surreptitiously, slinking into sight, but with a sudden screeching shout of "Here I am!" and "Hello, it's me again!"   I was thrilled last evening, arriving home just before sunset, to glance out the back window and see this bright yellow face turned up towards my window, welcoming me from winter into heaven.

Three short weeks ago, it was -17ºF one morning, the ground rock hard and unnurturing, the air as dry and crisp as a potato chip.  Two Saturdays past, I got outside for the first time this year, spread a little straw down where the mulch was thin, trimmed a couple of fruit trees, and prayed for warm weather.  Last Saturday, I officially kicked off the gardening year, weeks behind, clearing two beds, spreading more straw, and protecting the just-growing ornamental onions from ungulate nocturnal predators. But still, Spring I felt, was but a distant dream.

This week, however, the temperatures rose rapidly into the 70's for several days, the daffodils shot up from nothing, and lilac and forsythia buds swelled.  With colder weather forecast tomorrow, I didn't expect to see anything actually BLOOM, but there was my garden, faithfully feasting on the sun's rays and defiantly leading the way to a new season.  Not to be outdone by their taller, brasher daffodil friends, the sky-blue scilla, left here, and crocus, below at right, were also blooming near the path, leading me to happiness with every step.

The next four days are colder and rainy, but I don't care.  That thawing ground out there is bone dry and could use a week of rain.   I'm renewed now, confident that somewhere, just around the corner and another week away, Spring waits for me.  I'll meet you there soon, my friend, loppers and Hori-Hori in hand, heck-bent to feel the damp earth in my hands and the sunshine on my face. 

Who's Tired of This Crap?

Seattle, up there with the most snow in 50 years, are you tired of this crap?  Texas, covered in snow and freezing temperatures, how about you?  Upper Midwest, reaching streaks of record subzero days, are you about done shoveling the white stuff?   Well, guess what, ProfessorRoush is not near done.

I'm not near done because, with classes cancelled tomorrow, I can use it as an excuse to pick up groceries and supper and come home still early enough to see the sun cause a snow rainbow at 5:06 p,m.  I took this picture from the window of my Jeep just before I turned onto our road.  How rare to see a partial rainbow here in the dying light of a snow day; rarer still on a snow day where there was no snow predicted at all.  With all our science, with all our computers, we still can't predict snow 12 hours ahead.

I'm not near done with this crappy weather because exactly an hour later, at 6:06 p.m., my neighbor called me on the phone to make sure I looked at the sunset, a sunset with a magnificent pillar of fire leaping from the sun to the sky.  I hung up on him so I could snap this picture on my iPhone camera.  So that, gracious be God, I could capture the heavens and earth in golden embrace as the clouds turned pink in embarrassed glory.  I'll trade a so-so day of 20ºF temperatures for another subzero morning if I have any chance at another picture like these.  

And I'm not near done because I want, frankly, all the global warming fanatics to reap the whirlwind.  I've heard it up to my ears with global warming causing unstable weather patterns and cold days instead of hot ones, and I'm flabbergasted every time I hear that we've only got 20, 10, 5 years left before global warming climate change caused by industrial pollution cow flatulence ruins the planet.  Guess what; the Arctic still has an ice cap and Polar Bears are not yet extinct.  I haven't yet had the July Kansas sun cause blisters on my arms, but I'm pretty sure if I stuck my hand out the door for 10 minutes right now, I'd be pecking at the keyboard tomorrow with fists instead of fingers.  Tell you what, how about an experiment?  Let's all take off our clothes this May and live outside in the back yard for a year and see whether we die of heat or hypothermia first?

Ewwww...strike that thought.  That mental image is not a pretty Kansas picture like the ones above.  How about we all just live and let live, turn down our thermostats and our emotions right now to save respectively a little energy for our neighbors and a little angst for ourselves, and just calm down and enjoy the sunset for awhile?  

Super-Sunday-not

 Today is definitely not a Super Sunday.  For a Kansas gardener, it's a Mediocre Sunday, and if the gardener decides to curl up and find a good book, it could possibly become an Okay Sunday, maybe even a Fine Sunday, but at 7ºF outside at 12:00 p.m., it's not going to become a Super Sunday, football frenzy or not.  

I had been wanting one decent snow this winter, enough to make everything clean and smooth and white and I still haven't seen one.  What's on the ground now is just a little dusting, a little frosting on the prairie cake; just enough to need sweeping off the sidewalk but not enough to get out a shovel and struggle.  The primary dampening of my spirits, however are the result of the frigid temperatures.   We've had a mild winter, hardly a Zone 6 climate up until now, but yesterday somebody shut the freezer door and the temperatures plummeted alongside this dry snow.  More pertinently, there are some highs-in-the-teens and lows in the subzero temperatures predicted over the next 10 days, back to a true Zone 5 climate that we haven't seen in several years.  Last year at this time I was already clearing perennial beds on 55ºF afternoons.

For the record, I will watch the football game this evening, although I really don't know or care who I'll be rooting for.  Yes, it would be nice to see the long-suffering and local-to-me Kansas City Chiefs win another behind Mahome's spectacular passing accuracy and their daunting defense, but I also wouldn't mind watching 43 year old Tom Brady show Patrick the difference between how an old bull and a young bull approaches the field.  On the other hand, Brady was born in 1977, the year I graduated high school, so neither one is old enough to really appreciate the old bull and young bull joke genre that I'm alluding to.

Also for the record, yes, I cheated on these beautiful forced tulips that are currently in the middle of our kitchen table.  The local grocery store had these ensembles of glass, greenery, and glory for $9.99 the other day, priced low enough for even my miserly soul to consider worthy of a sawbuck.  Seven tulip bulbs to brighten Mrs. ProfessorRoush's Valentines day and keep me in her good graces, and then later I'll plant them in a pot with good soil and move them to the garden this summer.  I usually force a few bulbs on my own, but this year I just haven't found the urge or the time.  When these fade, however, I'm now inspired to go cut some forsythia and flowering almond branches to bring into the house and force into bloom.  Maybe the spring colors can provide us a Super Sunday later in February.     

Aubade Appreciation

 In an attempt to expand his horizons and improve on his lack of culture and grace, ProfessorRoush has, for several weeks. received a "word of the day" email from schoolofwordplay.com.  To be honest, I have no idea when I consented to be on this mailing list and I have already been finding myself less than enthusiastic about having to delete that email every morning among the 200 emails I get most every day.  In fact, just a few days ago I contemplated hitting that "unsubscribe" link and then moving the whole kit and caboodle into my Junk folder for good measure. 

This morning, however, I'm glad that my procrastination turned this nuisance into a positive note, because the word of the day for today was "aubade", pronounced as oh-bahd.  For the general unwashed among my readers, "aubade", which I did not have as part of my vocabulary until this morning, originated in the late 17th century from Spanish and French influences, and it is defined as "a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning."

My introduction to "aubade" eerily has coincided with an automatic re-post of the photo above from my wife's Facebook page that popped up earlier this week.  Now folks, ProfessorRoush is a little dense at times, and often slow to discern when the universe is trying to nudge me in a certain direction, but I can see the obvious hand of fate as well as the next fellow, and I decided perhaps I should post these photos here on my own blog. 

I, myself, took these pictures of our house from the road in front just almost a year ago (1/6/2020), at 7:39 a.m. on my way to work.  Pre-pandemic, they do have an innocence about them that tugs at me now with nostalgia, the calm pink sky giving way to the relentless yellow sun still just below the horizon, tranquility captured in the click of an iPhone.   

This isn't an eloquent poem proclaiming the beauty of that morning, nor have I composed music sufficient to convey what this picture means to my soul.  Rodgers and Hammersteins "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" from the musical Oklahoma comes to mind and is likely the pinnacle of music in regards to worshiping the sunrise, so I am too intimidated in its shadow to even try.  You'll have to just accept that my aubade today is simply this reverent post, remembering a morning when America was still innocent and our people unmasked and serene.