Orange Soda.

Eight azaleas, twelve daylilies, six iris, two hydrangeas and a peony leave our hero a little light in the bank account, but those prizes plus a trip to the prison farm for too-early-to-plant oregano and tender rosemary (to be distinguished, I think, from woody-stemmed) plus—oh, friends and fans of small Carolina towns—a pair of midday VFW hot dogs, slaw and mustard, please, made for the kind of Saturday that conjured memories of being six years old, or eight, or ten, and one's father stopping slyly into, say, the VFW hot dog situation, telling you, now his accomplice, Now don't tell your mom we did this. And then, at the cooler, after he's let you choose a Sunkist: Now don't tell her I said that was OK.

I hadn't had a Sunkist in probably ten years, or twenty. Won't have one for another however long. Dear sweet baby Jesus at the soda shop those things are sweet. Still: a nearly fine choice to wash down them VFW hot dogs.

The (relatively) low humidity plus the ground greening in out there has the morning light looking like glass. Sky a kind of washed-out blue. Leafless trees looking like they won't be that way long. Mid-forties here in the nine-o'clock hour, but even the heat on the breeze, to say nothing of the sun, says we'll achieve the sixties the fancies have been promising. Today's a day for turning soil over, for seeing what we've got there in the front yard, for seeing what we'll need to add. A little light to moderate mattocking. A chance to sully a perfectly good pair of jeans. Break in the resoled boots. Let's us all work hard enough to deserve that late-day beer, that self-satisfied squint into the cooling, falling evening sun.