Sweet Sweet Sweet

Spring peepers are tiny frogs that trill and piccolo all night when spring begins. It sounds like they're saying "Sweet, sweet, sweet." Demetrius said they were really saying "Love me, love me." That seemed right.

Aware now, along with my age group, that any spring could be my last, with all my soul I love every bit of it, even this odd 81-degree weather in mid-March. It's causing the neighbors to use their fireplaces and burn up the wood they didn't burn all this warm winter. It caused me to weed about four square feet of earth and plant arugula, a low-maintenance green which thrives when planted early. Three days later there was a little green mention. Two more days and genuine cotyledons (kottle-ee-dons), or baby plants, in their ballet skirts, had appeared. Like an idiot (who's lived alone on big acreage for a long time) I fell to my knees and said, "My sweethearts!"

And last night two barred owls howled and sparred for an hour, so much I thought they were coyotes, so much I stepped outside and said, "Okay, that's enough."