Ruth's Bush.

My neighbor, Phil, calls this plant — we have two of them, actually, both on the northwest corner of the house — Ruth's Bush. I used to know the real name of it. No longer. What I know is this: It's an early-spring bloomer, and it fragrances the whole yard. Ruth planted it. She lived here before the philandering airplane pilot and his praise-music recording wife. They lived here before I did. Before we did.

I had in mind writing a ton here today, recording all the vagaries surrounding the fireplace weather in Virginia, the gusts to 40 mph up on the western slope of Mount Rogers, the general and healthy reminder of what cold is. But it's pushing toward the mid-seventies here in 27408, with gusts of our own, though nothing like 40 mph, and the petals from the Japanese magnolia are raining down each time the wind picks up, and the thin high clouds we had for most of the morning are burning off, and even though I'm not at all sure shade counts as weather, the effect of the blown-open blooms on the tree out front is that the WeatherDeck is in a kind of dappled shady splendor, begging for me to take my Spring-Breaked self out there with Per Petterson's so-far excellent Out Stealing Horses, to take the dog out there with me, to sit and read and sit and read.

It is so good to go to Virginia. All of you should go. If you go, and if you're wearing the right clothes, you will feel like this:


But if when you return the weather is like it is today, you will have to go outside and sit and read. Today's weather report is strikingly similar to yesterday's. I know this. That is because today's weather is strikingly similar to yesterday's. Tomorrow, friends, I will endeavor to complain mightily about the likelihood that we will have another precipitation shortfall for March. Today — today I am going back outside.