Suddenly Spring

......One of these days I have to get my photo on this thing. I have a good and even recent one taken by my friend Isobel, but I need to figure out how to move it around enough to make it accessible.

I've been meaning to write for three weeks now, but I suppose I've been waiting for spring (I think it was Garrison Keillor who once said Minnesota has five seasons: Winter, Ice-breakup, Waiting for Spring, Mosquito Season, and Fall). Here in New Mexico we don't have to consider Ice-breakup; instead, we have the Winter Dries. After those record warm days in the last week of January, we went back to reality, meaning highs in the 40s-50s and lows in the low to mid teens. There were tiny red noses poking out of the ground in some of the beds for weeks, and I could commiserate--my nose was pretty red, too. But all of a sudden the past three days have been outrageously warm--I mean, one day the low was 15, and then the next morning it was 36!--and the highs have been 66-70. This is April weather, not February, and we've been setting temperature records all over the state (I apologize for those of you in the northeast, where you're having just the opposite). All those little noses popped up and became tulip leaves, now about four inches tall. The rabbits are very happy about that; evidently tulips are delicious. Yesterday morning I heard the first meadowlark saluting the rising sun with its lovely, happy song. Welcome, my little friend (not that the meadowlarks actually leave, but they stay pretty invisible all winter, and they don't sing then)!

The drawback to all this is that it's as dry as I can remember here. We haven't had any measureable moisture since early January, and that was only three inches of snow. I don't generally have to water the beds before March or April, but here I am with the hose, trying to provide enough water for the irises and garlic (and the tulips)to stay alive. Between the cold dry and now the warm dry, the soil is so dry that it has no cohesiveness, and when the wind blows, so does the soil. In the afternoons I can watch dust clouds rising thirty to forty miles away as the gusts drop off the Manzano Mountains. It's going to be a bad and very early fire season, though the volunteer fire people are ready. Still, there's a lot of country for a few fire guys to handle, so it could get to be a little exciting around here for the next few months. I'll let you know how it goes......