They Can, I Can't.

Last week 0 degrees. This week 70. That's better than the other way around.

Anytime I try to do something, I just can't. Have to go inward for a while and fix this. Am glad to have crocuses around for inspiration. They're blooming in the stony little rock-garden microclimate just outside the kitchen door. First seen March 2. Crocus day is always the real first day of spring. They've also already attracted honeybees.

Oh, I Gotta. . .

. . .call all my friends to come over, put on their water-resistant gear and boots with major treads and come with me to tour the property's 8 waterfalls just after a good solid rain. These are waterfalls #5 (above) and #2. To photograph Waterfall 2 demands you balance on a nice wet incline. From there it's only 25 yards to Waterfall 5 but it's not like there's a walkway. Bushwhack and step in the stream if you can't jump it, and risk the quicksand--because wet silica sand can make quicksand, and don't say no, because once I got caught in it under the Highway F bridge. It won't swallow you up like in the movies, but if both feet are in it you'll have a devil of a time trying to 1) grasp that you are stuck in quicksand and treading it like you're making grapes into wine and 2) free yourself. Pray that nobody else is there to jeer. It might help to untie and remove your boots and and throw yourself full length onto a nearby gravel bar where you can sit and think about how to pull your boots out.

The watercourses for each of these falls originate on the Divine property and empty into LaBarque Creek. Only in a very dry spell are these watercourses intermittent.

In Search of Spring

Soil at 50 degrees is the minimum for morel mushrooms. Each year about this time, every week I take the soil temp in the woods where they grow; this first time got 54 degrees. But really we can't expect them at this latitude (39N) so early in spring. If you were a morel, would you want to stand in wet 54-degree mud and stay there? Would you even poke your head out if there's still a chance that a freeze might shrivel your delicate tissues? Granted, it's very rich mud, quite satisfactory, but if I were a morel at this time of year there wouldn't be enough sun to coax me out.

So when the rain temporarily ceased, I (who am not a morel) went searching in the universe for other signs of spring, edible and not, and, dog my cats, I found some. The daffodil is not in my yard.

Plenty of brand-new Turkey Tail mushrooms and those brown Japanese wood-ears were growing on downed trees.

I and my neighbor Terri vote that spring should last all year. Yourself?

Winter Comes to Missouri

"Merry Christmas," I said to the custodian while tracking icy, dirty snow water onto his clean floor in the middle of March, the first snowy day after a string of 60- to 75-degree February days that had us all smug and out on the porch wearing tees and shorts. I was so happy I'd taken advantage of a clear dry Saturday, the previous week, to visit a distant university library during its spring break where its librarians, otherwise idle, waited on me, patiently answering low-hanging questions about the technology and returning over and over to my computer terminal to teach me things about stuff when of course they would rather be sunning.

Luckily I'd chosen that over planting vegetable seeds. Never be fooled by Missouri weather. During the warm days the bluebirds arrived and I raked up leaves into long landing strips of wet earth and sparse grass because they eat by pinning live prey to the earth. They do that more easily if the ground is free of fallen leaves and I was promptly at their service because bluebirds are among the top 100 things about life. I am their custodian. May I be always strong enough to do the job.

While looking for beauty I found a nest I'd never seen before although it had to have been there all winter.

I Got Me New Tars

I bought 4 new tires and I could just cry -- not because of their price, because $97 per tire is not outrageous for these good ones, Bridgestones -- but for how long I rode around on tires so crummy they changed my whole way of driving. It so happened that I thought my mechanics were rotating my tires at every oil change when they weren't, and the mechanic one day said when did you last rotate your tires, and I said, I thought you were doing that (never assume) and he said, come on out to the bay and see the uneven wear on your tires.

I thought, oh, no. He showed me the tire treads and seemed very serious. Does this mean I need new tires? I asked. If you rotate them can I still use them?

He said yes, but you should really get new ones.

Will these kill me? I asked.

No, they won't kill ya. But at high speeds you will feel a vibration.

So without ready money to buy a whole new set* (I'd just paid mucho dinaro to remove from the car a 10-inch dent that went down to the metal) I drove around for six or seven months on the unevenly worn tires, becoming more cautious, creeping across ice and praying, skidding when I braked in rain and in 1/16th of an inch of snow, hydroplaning on the freeway (the weirdest, sickest feeling), and just the other week the car, using momentum, skidded despite my braking out of the lane and right into Highway F where anybody could have been coming.

After fishtailing last week, almost hitting some railings, I told myself: Either you pay $500 deductible for repairs after smashing your car, or you pay $500 for new tires. Which will it be?

Very fortunately I had overpaid quarterly taxes and got a refund. I said to myself: What will you do with this refund? Will you be stupid and buy earrings? (I love earrings; have 4 piercings in each earlobe.)  Well, to pacify my inner Zsa Zsa I bought $40 worth of cheap earrings and earring parts for repair. Then I manned up and bought new tires.

Oh -- how different! I'd been driving fearfully, distrustfully, braking before I had to, taking it very slow around curves, fearing gravel, sand, and salt on the winter roads, worried about driving in rain. True, those tires did not kill me, but I am so relieved they are gone.

*the last time I bought new tires was at the Auto Tire. They put three 16-inch tires on my car and one 15-inch. I thought my one wheel well looked odd, but I didn't know from Adam or how to read tires. Besides, I trusted the professionals. About four months later a man noticed, circled the car and told me. That setup might have killed me. Better believe I bought these new "tars" elsewhere where there's free lifetime tire rotation. It's where the rubber meets the road.

Ripping Out Honeysuckles

There are three or four different kinds of invasive honeysuckles: Japanese, Amur, and others, and while not all honeysuckles are invasive tree killers, the tangled shrubbery you see along Missouri roadways and trainways, so thickly overgrown it can look almost like mist, about half the heights of the trees and and twining its way up, is the thing to root out. Yesterday I volunteered for Honeysuckle Removal Day at Bluebird Park. I'd never been there, but its name drew me, and I hate invasive honeysuckles too. Young people from colleges and prep schools were there en masse, and I worked with three young men who chopped, yanked and uprooted, while I pulled yards and yards of honeysuckle out of the grove of persimmon trees and put it at the curb for pickup. I honestly felt the trees thanking us. We cleared an area about the size of a living room, and after three hours we hadn't removed it all and there were some stalks (like the curved one on the left of the photo) too thick for anything but a chainsaw, but we had made a good start. Bluebird Park is a suburban park and I saw no bluebirds there, but I saw robins.

Tips from our leader: Remove honeysuckle shrubs by the roots if possible. When pulling their vines from the earth, pull out, not up. Cut the stalks as low on the trunks as you can, and the leader will come by and paint the stumps with Monsanto's Roundup, the only thing that kills 'em besides fire.

Be Good to Yourself

When peeper frogs sing (March 12), crocuses bloom (March 13), and I plant turnips and arugula (March 17) is my favorite time of year, and giddy with cheerfulness I chose as my mission to do something nice for myself, but then came the questions: Get a Subway sandwich? Go to the gym? Manicure hands so winter-dry that the knuckles bleed? And driving up "the strip" I saw an Auto Zone. Inspired, I stopped and bought what I truly needed for a happy spring: New windshield wipers. Hearing the clerk explain all the new exciting windshield wiper technology was by itself worth the price--but I also got the wipers and installation, after which we tried 'em out. My old wipers streaked the windshield like grease on a glass pan. The new wipers opened a whole world of clarity--sweet! Miraculous! What better way to celebrate spring than to see it clearly? $34 is cheap for such a long-lasting thrill.

Then I bought my sandwich, telling the sandwich artist that the sandwich was beautifully made and leaving a good tip, and went to the gym, and had a manicure and left a good tip, and have never been so happy about being good to myself. So you be good to yourself. The old-time pagans feasted at this time of year. Feast and celebrate any way you can.

Spring Green

After this winter we are all starved to see anything green, so I went walking to find and feast my eyes upon every possible green thing. It's too soon for leaves, but chives grew on the forest floor, Christmas ferns hung from the bluffs, and lovely spring green moss [pictured] grew over the thin rocky soil, and patches of algae lay submerged in the creek, its water made glass-clear by melting snow. And in the creek I saw, shooting by, a small half-fish half-frog: a tadpole! So I decided to take a chance and waited until dark and then opened the door to the porch and listened, and heard, for the first time this year, the spring-peeper chorus. I just about collapsed with joy and relief. Spring isn't quite dressed yet, but its music is playing.

Hungry Pileated Woodpecker

This male Pileated was hungry enough, in the seven inches of yesterday's snow, to allow me to stand in the open porch door and take his picture while he breakfasted on suet. His mate was nearby, but it wasn't her turn yet to leap onto the suet cage, clutch it with her long black toes, and eat. Not only that, but when they fly back to the tree trunk they wipe their beaks on the bark like it's a napkin.

High Water

My Weather Radar app forwards National Weather Service warnings by making the smartphone shriek and vibrate. It's been issuing flood warnings for this area since Sunday's heavy rain. This was taken where LaBarque Creek empties into the Meramec River -- the flood's peak, if it doesn't rain again today. A foot or two higher and the water'd crawl up over Highway FF as it did in '08, when all my three possible routes home, including the Interstate, flooded and the National Guard turned us back and I couldn't get home for four days. When the water gets up about this high I try not to leave home (which I'm grateful is on high ground). Flooding is a growing problem as more land is developed and paved. Jeff County Highway W is under water -- don't plan on going there.

The Lonely Day

I'm the luckiest person ever born but today I felt lonely, maybe because spring is so late in coming this year, and I knew I shouldn't sit in the house but go outside and do some work.

Green onions that Demetrius planted before he died four years ago still pop up and keep me company every spring, and they have naturalized into clumps all competing for space. I dug up and divided some clumps and replanted them so they'll grow thick and strong, and picked a few for cooking. That made me feel less lonely. And while digging I unearthed several moist healthy worms, just as good soil should have, and of course then I couldn't say I was alone at all.

While raking around the firebowl it occurred to me that I should light it. Fire is always warm and friendly. There's no rule that I can't. So I lit one. I didn't build a fire or feed it, I just lit what was there and let it burn orange as long as it would, releasing friendly crackles and sweet healing smoke of oak, and I felt even less alone.

I turned some soil, and as chilly as it is, it's not too chilly to plant my favorite salad herb, arugula, so I did that, and in six days I will be godmother to baby vegetable plants, which always make me happy.

Because my memories of Poland cheer me up, I made a Polish beer bread with rye flour and ate it with butter, not skimping, and cooked some sausage and peppers, and drank the rest of the beer that didn't go into the bread. I arranged to see some friends tonight. I feel much better.

The Garden in the Brain

I lost six days sick with flu and am just now catching up on mid-March's favorite activity: seeding summer vegetable plants. Last year all 12 tomato plants came up thriving. This year I planted 6 tomatoes, 2 parsley, and 4 Genovese basil in potting soil in an egg carton. This was shut in the furnace closet. When the seeds sprout the baby plants will be grow-lamped until May. Directly sown will be (not this week; next week, when I'm m strong enough to break and turn the soil): turnips, radishes, kale. When (or if) the sun comes out, then arugula.

Compared to March 2012's 70- and 80-degree days, here in eastern Missouri we've had cold rain, wind, mud, sleet, and wintry mix (everybody loves a wintry mix!) daily, so the imagination had to work overtime to first plant the garden in the brain, which is required before the garden in reality can manifest.

Toward Winter's End

This winter waited until the third week of February to really snow, and then a week later it snowed again, and the first week of March it snowed and then snowed again. The grape hyacinths are blooming, the robins are passing through here, the geese are flying north, I saw them all yesterday evening; then this morning it snowed once more. The lane where I, all bundled up against the wind, took my daily walk was crossed with arrow-like turkey tracks. May this be the last snow, so I can get to weeding and planting!

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."

A Toast to the New Year

Reeve, my close friend who has 100 head of cattle, is usually very busy, but he took time out during the holidays and he truly does wish us all a very happy new year on this little blue dot of a planet.

The Middle West

Fall is Church Supper Time in rugged rural Missouri; praise the Lord for ham, potato salad, slaw, green beans, white beans (savory not sweet, just as I would make them; my friend Ace ate two plates full); best homemade applesauce ever, coffee, iced tea and homemade desserts, served by the friendliest Midwesterners. Ace asked the dessert table people special permission to eat two desserts (lemon pie; pumpkin pie sans Reddi-wip). Cost of meal $9 for adults; I bought. Some churches charge only a "free will offering." Note "The Middle East" biblical-era and modern maps tacked up behind the people; obviously Bible-study material. The most important part of any church is its basement. Rather go there than any restaurant.

Do you ever attend church suppers in your area? People were so glad to see us strangers they showed us photos of their grandchildren. This particular church is far out of the way, in the remains of a tiny town alongside the train tracks. In fall the Catholic church raffles off a live pig; I never buy a chance because I'm afraid I'll win. Another church has a whole-pig roast, and yet another church an awesome pork sausage dinner; that's the one they pour you a glass of milk at table. In spring, fried fish at Lenten church suppers is so good it just about converts me.

The 13-Year Cicadas Emerge

After 13 years underground, cicadas (genus "Magicicada"; top that!) emerge all brown and ugly, climb a leaf, molt off the brown shell and become, for a few weeks, glamorous winged reproducing adults. Their famous earth-rattling, nighttime choral song is the males' mating song. It happens to be the 13th year here in rugged rural Missouri. (Northern states have 17-year cicadas). But I didn't know that. I was cutting some purple irises for my table and saw bugs all over the iris leaves and said, "What's this, inch-long bugs hanging in pairs on my iris leaves? Eww!"

Once I saw them, I saw them everywhere! All doing the same. And I plucked up a brown one and saw it was just a translucent shell, still clinging to the leaf, but empty. And near every shell was a live cicada entirely new to the world, quietly drying off like a butterfly, and waiting a few days for its exoskeleton to harden. Then off to the party, which will last just a few weeks, until July. I ran for the camera to show you. Once in every 13 years!

Wildflower Week, May 8

Too early for roses? Not in rural Missouri. For a Sunday in May, the beautiful little Dwarf Wild Rose, Rosa multiflora.

Wildflower Week, May 7

One of the first wildflowers I remember -- I thought it was a daisy -- and it took me hours to pull out the tiny threadlike petals saying "He loves me, he loves me not...." It's a Daisy Fleabane plus a bud. Botanical name Erigeron strinosis, which sounds like something my mother said you should excuse yourself from the table for.

The Stick Who Loved Me

Let me put to rest all your doubts about my suitor, the Walking Stick, hangin' on my kitchen storm door trying to impress me, this time for three straight days. He's really sweet but not my type. One year he had a girlfriend, and maybe just to be spiteful he and she did you-know-what on the window screen all day. I do mean all day. Enough time for me to call people, ask them to drive over and see it. Very tantric, just joined and didn't move a muscle. But when the Walking Stick is single again, who does he call on? Not his ex, but old reliable me. I like how he automatically ASSUMES I am single and available. He does the fop thing, changing colors, and I just smile kindly, say a few admiring words, tell him the right female Walking Stick is somewhere out there waiting for him, he just has to join a church or the Beginner Aerobics class down at the community center.