Spring, please.
I am eager for Spring, and while the calendar, the planets, and Major League Baseball have declared it Spring, I have not seen what I want to have seen. I want to see snowdrops and crocus. Fat robins. Wakeful grass. Some insects.
There is none of that now. There is instead the slightest fur on the maple trees. A hint of red… perhaps, but really nothing. There is still ample snow, and wanting it to be gone, I went down to the sub-basement of Old Building here at the Mill and knocked on Percy’s door.
“Hey, Percy,” I shouted. “Don’t you think it is time to start fixing the divots that the snowplow made in the lawn?”
I could hear her stir inside, but from the sound of her answer I knew she wasn’t even out of bed.
“No,” she said.
“Don’t you want to know how the ruts got there?”
“No,” she said again.
“Well,” I said, “The Swede got drunk on New Year’s and said he was going to build a hockey rink, but he just tore up half of the yard and then went back to Mulligan’s.”
“Good for him,” she said.
During the summer, there is nothing Percy cares about more than the lawn, so her response to my, admittedly sensationalistic, report of Old Man Johansen’s New Year’s mishap made my heart sink. We must be a long way away from spring…
