Hard Freeze.

A cold truck on the way in, a cold truck on the way back home: we're in that place where you could wake up any given morning and have it smell like May or like December. This morning a good solid chill, a hard freeze, a crystalline quality to the sunlight to remind us that it remains solidly February. Frozen birdbath, frozen cat water. And you heard it here first, friends and fans of weather: the daffodils are at a dead stop, holding out for the promise of a rain in the mid-fifties tomorrow and Wednesday. After that, we'll see: but first let's see if it rains.

In the fall, when the light starts to get long, I get excited: Comes then the weather of flannel and fireplaces and perhaps a way to really enjoy a good peaty scotch. Dig around in the drawers for the watchcaps. The season of boots. The light gets less long now and I think about what dug dirt smells like, how many more months the pansies might be good for, when the prison farm might have impatiens, how long after that it might be until they have tomatoes, until they have okra.

For all my wireless internet and cable tv and flea oil for the dog and presidential primary bumper stickers, I remain happily a creature most attuned to when the prison farm might have those okra seedlings, two leaves apiece, ready to go. Plant those bad boys over by where Phil's cat likes to roam, keep the rabbits off of them. Okra from June until the light gets long again.

Well, then. Live righteously, and it's not long till the cannas start coming back up out of the ground. Headed for a season of things happening. Coming out of a season of stasis. The sedum, right around the base of each plant, have little green clusters wanting to start back out. They'll get frozen back, but they're coming. They're coming. Rain tomorrow if we're well behaved. Behave well, people.