I think my fondest memory of yesterday evening will be the three of us--me, monshu, and Diego--slouchng in the front room trying to suppress our yawns because we were all enjoying the conversation so much that none of us wanted to be the first to admit we needed to wind it down and seek bed. It wasn't even that late, but between early rising and (in my case) late falling, we were all bleary. Plus, a hearty meal of (boughten) spätzle and (homemade) Swedish meatballs accompanied by a bottle of Naia and followed by mini Derby pies was definitely weighing on us. Besides, by then we'd accomplished what I'd hoped for: Diego (who works from home) had plans to join the Old Man for a midday concert on Monday.

It's been a somewhat stressful week, but things are looking up. I have my old reliable back in the assistant position, and he more than proved his worth today helping me out with a tattle tape test. This required that we set off the exit gates repeatedly for several minutes and I could tell he was getting more than a little embarrassed, but I coached him through it and then hustled us past the angry glare of the instructor who was attempting to conduct a class in the lobby at the time. Now I feel like the two or three other projects I've promised for delivery by the end of the week might happen as well.

And spring continues to burst out all over. Dad and I saw the first Judas tree over the weekend and now they're even coming into bloom closer to the lake. No hawthorns or dogwoods yet, but ornamental pears, plums, and more cherries. Plus azaleas everywhere, periwinkle in full bloom even on the south side of the streets, and trees leafing out right and left. They're predicting height-of-summer temperatures for tomorrow--which, if true, will make my office a swelterbox. Time to pack some shorts.

Sorry to post so much about the weather, but it's been the most interesting thing going on around here. When they predicted snow for Monday night, I didn't think it would stick. When I saw it sticking (mainly to leaf litter and other natural detritus), I didn't think it would stay. And when I saw it in the morning, I didn't think it would survive the day.

Wrong on all counts! This was the morning I thought we'd have yesterday: A few small patches in shady corners and plenty of green elsewhere. The flowers all seem to have made it through okay, though the daffodils were really displaying why the Irish name for them is "herb of the bent head". There were plenty of them about: I was waiting patiently all last week for them to finally bloom, and it finally happened over the weekend. The warm weather also set off many of the trees, leading to the jarring site of snow clinging to branches of blooms and fallen maple buds forming the nuclei of balls of ice on the sidewalk. (They looked like some sort of odd Japanese sweet.)

The squill has finally emerged as well, which is good since I've been wondering what became of it all. Tulips, though, haven't really started yet and I've yet to see a single flowering shrub in bud let alone in bloom. Our freezing nights, however, may at long last be coming to an end, though it's a while yet before I can think of sticking anything in the ground.

No matter how raw it may be outside, monshu still insists on cooking like it's spring. Last week, he bought strawberries for salads. Friday's dinner was baked fish with fennel and leek. Saturday he wanted to bring home spring asparagus, but Devon Market was unexpectedly out, the bin it had been in cracked and empty and being repaired. Tonight it was a modified primavera with country ham replacing the prosciutto, fresh green peas, zucchini, and more leeks. (Apparently green peas appeal to the cat, who kept mashing them between his teeth even after he'd licked off the cream sauce.)

Now that the ice is nearly gone, I made my first foray into the garden. There still isn't enough free space in the composter for all the dead clematis vines or the fir branches, but I pulled enough out of the plot to uncover the woodruff. The thyme may be coming back as well, and the sorrel of course, but looks like we've lost the rosemary and even the sage. There was catnip as well and the cat went wild for it as if it were superconcentrated. I was particularly surprised how supple most of the fir sprigs were, but then they'd been frozen inside of snowbank from early January until only a couple weeks back.

Daffodil shoots have appeared in the front lawn and while reading in the nook I noticed fluffy white buds--or blossoms?--on the elms across the street. That's the first activity I've seen on any trees anywhere, they seem shocked into deep hibernation by the cold and too mistrustful begin emerging yet. Last week in the sunnier beds along Arthur I saw Japanese iris and crocus. I'm hoping that by tomorrow the daffodils there will have burst into bloom, marking the true beginning of the season.

Spring is here, sort of. The high temps in the teens (Celsius) we were promised for this week haven't materialised, but the days have been consistently above freezing. It's hard to notice, however, what with the gray skies and bitter winds. Huge piles of nivée are still heaped up everywhere and hardly seem to be shrinking. The muddy puddles on the ground near them seem to be due to this morning's rain rather than any melting.

But I'm able to add kitchen scraps to the composter with confidence again. And shoots are sprouting up. I first saw daffodils emerging a week ago, before the last dusting of snow, and worried they'd be frozen out. They seem to have survived, though a little frostbitten. A coworker tipped me off to the presence of winter aconite and I tramped all around looking for it. Naturally I found it in the most sheltered spot here: a south-facing sunken garden. And I had to tramp over a bar of snowice to reach it. There are snowdrops there, too, also in full bud. A few more mild days, and they should all be in bloom.

Tomorrow evening we have the condo meeting I've been dreading for months. Beforehand, though, we're heading over to Massouleh to celebrate Nowruz. That should perk me up, even if it is grey and cold again.

The water coming in through the window was a steady trickle when I left the house this morning. (The GWO later told me he'd been emptying the mixing bowl underneath it several times an hour.) After today's warm-up, I expected to come home to a gusher. Instead, there was...nothing? Apparently the flow ceased sometime around midday. Not that that gave monshu any rest. He went outside and chopped up ten buckets of ice from the deck above so we can actually use our porch without being drenched in ice-cold water.

Yesterday's snowfall made the contrasts even more dramatic. Then it was all champ and churn; today it was dirty water, slush, and bare pavements. Tomorrow I expect to see exposed earth. Not that I want to; already the crumbling snowbanks are revealing oodles of trash I was happy to leave buried. I suspect just the amount of pet waste alone is going to be pretty horrifying. My winter coat is too heavy for the weather, but it's easier to keep donning it than to think about what to wear instead and risk underdressing.

I suppose a day when my hay fever is raging is a good time to talk about what I saw blooming there and here, before and after I came back. For starters, this is the most topsy-turvy weather I can recall in ages. Every day I spent in St Louis was colder and wetter than the corresponding day in Chicago. Saturday, for instance, it was ten degrees warmer (6℃) here than there and mostly sunny as opposed to overcast and drizzly. When we went into the mine on Friday, it was warmer in there than outside. This wasn't true during the middle of the week, but that's when I was in Arkansas anyway.

The weather down there could hardly have been better: highs in upper 70s (mid 20s Celsius), clear, and dry. We never turned on the AC in our room, we just propped the windows open (no mean feat since there were no counterweights) even though this meant letting in a surprising amount of road noise. The only night this didn't really work was the last and paradoxically the coolest; apparently, it was also the most humid, and the fans were doing a terrible job of bringing in outside air, so it got awful stuffy.

Dad complained about the inaccuracy of meteorologists but they got one thing absolutely right: a week and a half beforehand, they predicted that a massive "pneumonia front" would push in on Thursday, bringing plunging temperatures and lots of rain, and that's just what happened. The high that day didn't even reach 50 (10℃) and visibility went to hell. On our way to the Cliff House for breakfast that last morning, I feared we wouldn't see a damn thing out the windows, but it was far enough down from the summit that at least you could cast your gaze upon the valley.

As you'll recall from my whining, when I left Chicago, we were finally seeing spring arrive: daffodils, forsythias, and hyacinths with tulips, magnolias, and bluebells on the verge. In St Louis, most of the flowering trees--particularly pears, cherries, and redbuds--were already finished, but to my delight there were still plenty of dogwoods (both pink and white) to be seen. Also lilacs and azaleas, with iris and peonies in the bud.

Given the difference in latitude, I expected the Ozarks to be as far out ahead of St Louis as St Louis was relative to Chicago. But the difference in altitude (258 m for Jasper vs 142 m for St Louis) must've made a difference because there were still dogwoods to be seen in the wild, although obviously past their peak. Dad thought we'd be coming during a lull between the forest flowers (which are early spring bloomers) and the prairie blossoms, but there were actually plenty to be seen: mostly phlox, but also wild iris, pussytoes, fire pinks, jack-in-the-pulpits, spring beauties, honeysuckle, violets, rue anemones, and several species that we weren't able to identify at all. (Dad forgot to pack his field guides.) Also one mayapple still in bloom and one columbine just opening.

The gardens in town were dominated by Dutch iris. One house in particular had at least a half-dozen showy varieties in full bloom. (We returned with camera in hand, so hopefully Dad will post his pictures.) We also saw azaleas and pinks and the first of the roses. Most impressive of all, perhaps, was a massive rosemary plant in the inner court of the inn, with its tiny purple blossoms. Hard to imagine that the day after we left, it was barely above freezing and the weather service was reporting a "wintry mix" for town and actual accumulation to the west--particularly seeing as it was one of the more pleasant days Chicago'd seen so far this year.

The warmth and sun combined with the weeks of rain before really paid dividends when I returned: tulips filled all the borders and cherries and pears were at their peak in Ping Tom Park. Forsythia which were only just starting before I left are fading and leafing out. On my street, the bluebells are in full bloom along with the kerria and the viburnum is starting. The sorrel in the garden is huge, as is the celery plant left behind by the Other Gay Couple; soon we'll have purple clematis and I need to get my act together if I'm to make woodruff syrup again before it blooms.

Forget for a moment those forecasts predicting snow showers for Friday. Spring is really-honest-to-goodness-cross-my-heart-no-fooling here at last. We'll be just shy of 20℃ this afternoon. Plus I saw the first daffodils! Only a couple fully opened, unless you're talking about the fairy daffodils across the street, in which case it's party time. Plus there are buds on the trees at last--big red ones on the silver maples, large enough to be brought down with the recent high winds. Just as important as the warmth is the rain. I was really getting concerned at how dry it had been, but now they're predicting wetness every day of the week. Good. The combination will make all the difference; I expect to see forsythia blooming by the end of the week. Maybe even some magnolias? I dare not hope.

Seems like we finally have the garden situation sorted. I sent around an invitation for garden plots last week as a formality, since Scooter and I had pretty much divvied up the beds between ourselves already. Then out of nowhere, two longtime residents who--to my knowledge--have never gardened before suddenly announced their intention to seek plots. We grumbled (I ended up having to move the dormant dogwood twice), but acknowledged that it was our own fault for jumping the gun. At least we've got the plot between us with the firebush, and once that's relocated (c'mon, Peoples, get your freakin' act together!) we'll move in on it.

Fie upon the meteorologists! I'm seriously beginning to wonder if there's any reason to favour their predictions with regard to precipitation over those of an old man with bunions. Beyond the fact of it being the first temperate day in weeks, the reason I made such a push to get into the garden yesterday was that I was told to expect a night of pouring rain. It didn't pour. It didn't sprinkle. We didn't see so much as one solitary raindrop.

I'm not saying that getting out there was pointless; Ceres knows I needed the shove. But now I'm finding it necessary to go out again and hook up the hose in order to make sure everything's good and watered. I stuffed the composter full of dry tinder and then left the top off to wet it; now I've got the hose running over it. By far the bulk of the new stuff is the rest of the autumn-blooming clematis I couldn't fit in there last fall--probably about a cubic metre of foliage which I crushed down to a couple of litres. Unfortunately, in the process of doing that, I distributed roughly two billion fluffy little clematis seeds across the length and breadth of the garden plots. Literally, there's a layer of them at least an inch deep over our section. I foresee a long summer of weeding ahead.

And a long summer of pruning. In ripping out the clematis, I found green shoots already almost a metre or more. Keeping it in its place is going to be a challenge. Same goes for the woodruff at its base which is fast spreading into the sunnier areas of the garden. I already have plans for the round trellis which is poised to stand on the border of our doubled area and the spare plot. (monshu suggested morning glory but I may have found something better.) Unless someone claims it, Scooter and I are setting it aside as swing space; the dogwood is there now and the firebush is likely to join it as he digs it out in order to take over the plot next to his.

Aside from the clematis, there are green (and very spicy!) shoots on the chives and purplish new leaves on the sorrel. Despite the mild winter, however, neither the rosemary or verbena seem to have pulled through. Our ex-neighbours' English thyme appears to have made it and will be joined by the lemon thyme I bought yesterday whenever it's warm enough to put it into the ground. (Probably not for another month yet.) I also picked up seeds and will try my luck at sprouting marjoram, lemon balm, and lemon basil (dill wasn't recommended for starting indoors) in the front window for later transplantation.

To my annoyance, Gethsemane had no mache, but I found something else which can be started outdoors before the last frost and will hopefully be a pleasant surprise for the Old Man. It's hard to be cross with them, though, when they were so outrageously nice to me during my visit. I had a lovely chat about begonias, stephanotis, and Easter cactus with one scraggly dude in the greenhouse and the woman at the counter not only promised to order me some mache seeds but was so protective of the plants that she wouldn't let me take the thyme out unwrapped until I'd sworn up and down I'd found it outside on a cart and not in the tiny temporary greenhouse.

Yesterday the world was melting and I felt it was finally turning its back on winter. So I was surprised and dismayed to see the fresh snow this morning, even though I was still coming home last night as the drizzle began to freeze. There's wasn't much of it, but enough to cover the green grass that was beginning to show everywhere. I was hoping it would all burn off before noon, but it's still below freezing up here.

I'm not sure what this means for the daffodils which were already sprouting in the south-facing lawns. Many of them already got tricked once several weeks ago and I wonder if they'll even survive another shock. The crocuses seem not so easily fooled, but I'm surprised not to see a single snowdrop anywhere. Despite all the talk of "global warming" inspired by the mild winter, the daily highs are running about 10℉ below average right now.

I couldn't resist sending my youngest nephew a gift for his birthday. But since I'm not allowed to have a favourite, this means I'm condemned to send each of the little bastards something this year. Trouble is, his is the only one I can remember consistently, since it falls smack between St Patrick's and St Joseph's. However, Sis was feeding me the dates last night and, if I haven't munged them, now I've got a hook to hang each on: IMI is St Crispin's Day, ECI is the feast day of St Louis (our hometown's namesake), and AWI is Sts Peter and Paul.

It's funny what feast days were retained in our local traditions and which were lost. St Nick's is a big deal--we celebrated it both at school and at home--but Carnaval was forgotten completely, even though we lived in a city founded by Frenchmen and heavily salted with Rhinelanders. I guess that's what we get for importing so many of our priests from Ireland. We didn't even get pancakes on Shrove Tuesday!

Hardly a day goes by any more that I don't check that awesome wind map that made the rounds a while back. Today I saw that the winds were straight out of the north and I knew what we were in for; the grey skies and spatters of drizzle were just a bonus, a grim reminder of all the awfulness we missed out on this year. It's great weather for getting sick. The return of cool weather seems to have caught us in a transition between early spring and late spring blooms. Tulips are still up, but irises are still weeks from putting out buds. I did see a chestnut in the bud this week, but everything that is out has already peaked for the most part.

I thought I would come back to work refreshed from my mid-week break, but the truth is I struggled to make it through the past couple of days. I haven't even managed to finish cleaning up the mess the construction workers left of my workspace and move in completely. Maybe I'll feel differently next week? What with the exhausting weekend I have planned, it sure ain't the way to bet.