You Don’t Have To Be Crazy

Texas weather explains the way Texans behave:  two quilts in the morning and a fan the evening before means that it was hot when we went to bed and cold when we woke up.  Today we ran the air conditioner in the truck, and Fang got sunburned on his neck while working on the Mustang.  The ground is warm enough—for the moment—to plant something like petunias and snapdragons, but this weekend it might just freeze off the blooms.  Plant cabbage, onions, and radishes and smile.  Plant anything else and the grub worms will enjoy the rotted seed.

And if the weather is not enough to confuse our lives, just look at the poor bemused, confused, and abused trees.  Plums, apricots, and assorted fruit trees have already begun to bloom.  So much for the fruit crop this year!  It’s February, for pity sake!  The mesquite hasn’t even got a tiny bit of green about the limbs; its sap is still down around the roots like any sensible tree.  It’s another month until Easter, so the calendar and the weather are hopelessly unsynchronized.

And just look at that peckerwood!  He is out there on that old dead elm tree just a bleep screepin’ his heart out to attract a mate.  If she has any sense at all, she hasn’t even packed up to leave Georgia yet.  But don’t tell that to the silly finches or the cedar wax wings.  Honestly!  It is just too early to be expecting bugs, buds, and berries.  Except for the flippin’ love bugs!  HOW in all that is right about freezing weather do those bugs make it through the winter and come back fifty fold every other week?  The whole world could come to an end tomorrow, and those bugs would just keep on multiplying!

With a water hose in one hand and a digger in the other, my efforts moved around some wild verbena and a couple of those sticky little weeds that look almost edible—for deer, that is.  If we don’t get a flood pretty soon, we might as well call in the dogs and call it a summer.  Nothing is going to grow in dry heat.  Even the water from the washing machine and the dish water wouldn’t be enough to keep a good flower bed going.  But the roses will not die for lack of water even if we have to move them next to the dog’s water bowl.  It makes one wonder how the early pioneers ever grew enough to eat, much less anything to make a house look like a home.

Up north a friend is watching for an early crocus.  They may still get some snow.  If we are lucky, we won’t get any tornados.  And yes, insanity makes all the difference in how one lives with weather.