April Showers.

In and out the same way: far too warm. On the front side it felt gifted, odd. Here on the 31st it feels like the tail of a month of plain strangeness, of someone else's weather, of our weather two months too soon. Storms in the area. Pollen all over the porch. An afternoon of small chores giving way to this gray sky, to what time there is left in the Toad's nap. Maybe my own nap. Maybe just ten empty minutes.

We'll bounce all through the seventies this coming week. Some nights cool, some nights not. Decent chance of rain every other day or so. And that's about how it was all of March, except for those few stretches of days where it wasn't. We'll see what April brings. Showers, I hear.

Upward Trend.

Already you know you were wrong about the weather: Stick the top half of your body out the door to see what's what, and then it's back upstairs to find a thinner shirt and some shorts for the Toad. Them long-legged pants will not cut it on the playground today, mister.

An early-summer heat is back in the sun—it's not hot out there, but it will be, or close to it, and suddenly the various fancies seem in disagreement about the coming five days. The national TV still has us mid-seventies. The government bumped us to the low eighties. Eric Chilton's kid attends the Toad's school, so let's go with News2: Upper seventies. See? A nice clean compromise. A too-hot-by-five-or-eight-degrees compromise, but a compromise all the same. Keep it tuned here, of course, to find out who was right, only much too much after the fact to have done anything about it. We remain, steadfastly and as always, your only source for Triad weather after it happens.

Are you in need of more, WeatherHeads? Do you need to know about the irises blooming around the corner, the pin oaks leafed out, the new shade on the walk to daycare? The quarter-inch of pollen on the front porch? The carpenter bees so fat they're like marbles? The nagging feeling that we're edging up against drought, this past weekend's hailstorm notwithstanding? No. Probably you don't need to know all that. Probably you need a forecast. Here: go buy something to plant. Make sure there's beer in the fridge for the five o-clock hour. Stop writing about the damn outside and go outside.

Nearly Perfect.

We've got thin clouds riding by out there, folks, and warming temperatures. This morning was flannel weather, this afternoon flip-flops. We're settling into a pattern I'm too afraid to call spring. I don't want to scare it off. But: outside of next Monday, when they want to bump us over 80 again, all ten days in the ten-day look like windows open day and night. Keep the can beers cold, and keep the coffee beans at the ready. Plot and plan ways to get the pollen off the front porch. Walk the dog. Watch the maples leaf out seemingly by the moment. It's nearly April. Maybe we can stop calling this the apocalypse, and just try to enjoy it. Check back with me in late June when high tide'll be in my front lawn, but for now, I have to go outside.

Cool Morning.

Today was a day of both seasons: late winter and early spring. Friends around the corner and down the hill report morning frost. The Toad slept through the nine o'clock hour, so I happily -- outside of his ongoing contagion -- can't confirm. Fire in the shed while AMR watched the sick Toad, who can now say 'sick Toad.' Then: A slow low burn into the afternoon, everything so green now, so bursting -- we seem almost through the bloom. The irises are left. The rhododendrons. Some of the azaleas. Not much else. Warmer through the next 30ish hours, then cool, then warm. More seasonal, if you will, than we have been. Spring. Sort of. What's left of it, at least. The hosta are up. Do with that what you will.

Weekend Away.

Go away for the weekend and this is what I get? Gently hail-damaged daylilies, Venus and Jupiter and the moon lined up in the clear western evening sky, a continuing breeze, half the humidity, a lawn to mow, and a frost warning? I'll take it. We're still too warm, but this is better. This you can wear jeans in. This will slow the azaleas just enough. Tomorrow morning wants to be cold enough for a true, full-stove fire out in the shed. Yes, the Toad comes back from the beach with contagious bacterial conjunctivitis, but let's keel our way along the positive side of the shoal for now, shall we?

About the beach: When the front made it that far east Saturday night, it pushed a storm apart as it came across the island, broke blue sky out behind the rain even as it was raining -- and right at sunset, delivering maybe the best light I've ever seen. Orange. Crayon orange. You had to just stand there and stare at it, not believe it, stare at it anyway.

The dogwood blooms flashbulb white. I bought a string trimmer. The joy of last fall's purchase of a first-pull mower still hasn't totally receded. The yard is full of weeds and clover. The Toad has a massive fever and makes jokes anyway. We have limes in the house, and whiskey, though those two things don't go together. Tomorrow's trash day. The Toad loves trash day, loves the trucks. Basura, he says, even from his crib. Basura. Basura. Basura guck.

And baseball's coming.

Vernal Machine.

Open the windows at night and still the house won't quite cool off. Tulips blooming. The dogwood. Grass in need of mowing, and it's only been five days. Birds and birds. Robins and cardinals calling the evening down, mockingbirds bringing the next round of eighty degrees up out of the fog we see each morning. Finches. Wrens. Pollen. Black ants. Bees. Still a week of March left. Still all of April. Thunderstorms. Humidity. Coffee. Cold beer. Sound of lawn equipment. Sound of chop saws. Sound of the air handler atop the State Employees Credit Union. All the shades of green there are.

Winter Ends.

That, friends and fans of weather, was quite a show. I'm not sure it'd be accurate to say the whole thing moved northwest to southeast -- mainly it built back on itself and hit us again and again with lighting -- but it was enough to land the dog in my lap from right around supper until right around now, enough to have the Toad staring off to the north from the porch just-pre-bedtime, convinced the thunder was a drum. After it was all but done, lighting hit somewhere just south, between the steeple and the college, had me ducking and flinching in the kitchen window. Winter's over. There is no spring. This was the summer pattern we hope so hard for -- in late July.

Sunday School.

I think we have to call it like it is: three months from now we'd be saying it was a heat wave, and a heat wave that hung on and on. We're seven days in and the forecast has seven more like this. Ten more, if you want to believe that far ahead. Next Sunday, Monday and Tuesday -- the 25th on, if you will, and even if you won't -- certain of the fancies dip us into the forties at night, which may be enough for morning fires in the shed. Still, they put us back in the seventies during the day, which is what? Ten degrees above average? Fifteen? What we're having is an instant bloom: my cherry tree bloomed overnight. Everything's blooming and wilting in days, not weeks. We're living in a time-lapse film. I mowed the lawn. I found a gladiola, of all things, three inches out of the ground in the front garden. Yes, it's beautiful out there. Yes, we grilled in the back yard tonight for the Sunday Roast. Yes, these open windows all these nights satisfy some core urge I'd nearly forgotten pulled at me. But aren't -- weren't -- we supposed to be ascetic a little longer? All this feels unearned. Undeserved. If I celebrated Lent, I'd say we were most certainly doing it wrong.