After the Rains

It would appear that the rains have moved out of the area for now, after another night of heavy thunderstorms. When I emptied the rain gauge at 8 this morning, there was five inches’ accumulation since Wednesday morning, and the front page of the paper featured photos of random devastation wreaked by isolated tornadoes. All is well here, though (yesterday I had to reset the microwave clock twice because of power blips, today only once), and by 10 a.m. the sun had come out and I was able to get out and walk.

Under a mostly blue sky, the grass and trees looked greener than ever. If there were any doubt that spring has sprung, the pecans would prove it. In case you don’t know, pecans are a very cautious tree, the last to lose their leaves in the fall and the last to leaf out in the spring, so when the pecans get their new spring raiment, you know spring is really here: there may be another cool snap, but the danger of frost is past.

I saw several runners and walkers out taking advantage of the weather, which was breezy and seemed cooler than when I went out for the paper (at which point it was quite muggy). And as I turned one corner I saw a whole family standing out in their front yard—father, mother, and two small children. I’m no longer very good at estimating ages, but if I had to guess, I’d say the little girl was maybe a year and a half and the little boy about three. All four were staring at the lawn, but the object of their attention could not be seen. Surely too early for an Easter egg hunt? As I approached I detected movement. Surely too early for an Easter pet? Perhaps a wild rabbit?

Finally I drew close enough to see a large box turtle plodding through the tall grass. I couldn’t quite make out what the people were saying, but from their body language I gathered that the parents were urging a “Look but don’t touch” policy, while the children were all for capturing the turtle and keeping it for a pet. As they physically yearned toward it, I caught a snatch of something about letting it return to its home in the wild. Perhaps it had struggled up from a nearby gully to escape the torrents of stormwater runoff.

The disadvantage of walking fast and minding my own business is that I see these brief and incomplete vignettes of life. Often I make up my own stories about what I see, and if I were a real writer, I could probably turn these to my advantage. As it is, they just give me something to think about as I keep on walking.

Green Party

It was raining this morning, and I didn’t think I’d be able to walk, but, as luck would have it, the skies cleared just as I finished my chores, and I was able to squeeze in a walk before I had to dress for my Rotary meeting. It was a great day to be outside! Thanks to the recent spring rains and warming temperatures, everything is very green. Shrubs and yards and beginning to green up, and, on the bluff overlooking the bay, the year-round grasses are beginning to shoulder aside the winter rye sown by the City in the fall to maintain a green lawn.

We don’t have many deciduous trees around here—mostly pines and cedars and magnolias and a variety of evergreen oaks. Our live oaks stay green throughout the winter, but, although they don’t lose their leaves in the fall, they do drop them in the spring. Right now they are donning their new summer raiment, tender young green leaves whose incongruity with the gnarled old trunks always reminds me of little old ladies in frilly organdy party dresses.

Adding to the party ambiance are the azaleas, which are just now coming into glorious flower, even while the winter camellias are still blooming. The Taiwan cherries and Japanese magnolias responded to the first breaths of spring several weeks ago, closely followed by a few courageous dogwoods. Brilliant purple wisteria dramatically blankets an oak across the street. It would probably be an exaggeration to claim a “riot of color,” but there are certainly plenty of colorful accents, not least of which are the corner beds and hanging baskets planted by the City. Surely this must be the most beautiful time of year in Fairhope.

Running with Scissors

Microsoft Word 6.0 and Microsoft Word for Windows 95 had a “Tip of the Day” feature that could be configured to display a tip about Word features every time you started the application. Someone with a sense of humor (there are more of these at Microsoft than you might imagine) had included a number of “tips” designed to make users smile. One of these was “You can hurt yourself if you run with scissors.” Just as our mothers always told us!

I thought about this today as I was walking, thinking that “walking in traffic” is another dangerous activity. This is the weekend of Fairhope’s annual Arts & Crafts Festival, which started today, and my walking route takes me through much of the vast parking lot that the side streets become at this time. The parked cars were just an obstacle; the moving ones were a downright hazard. And today is mild compared to what it will be like tomorrow, as thousands of people hunt for parking spaces (we can be sure that at least two of them will park in our front yard, since we’ve given up on trying to block it off, but with any luck they won’t block our driveway—not that we can get anywhere from here, anyway).

Admittedly, I was walking rather late today (around noon), but walking earlier is not necessarily the answer, either—at least not tomorrow morning, when our neighborhood becomes the scene of the Spring Fever Chase 10K and Fun Run.

Still, I am determined to get out and walk insofar as possible. The weather is absolutely glorious, and I have been balked of walking for too long. About a month ago, I reported being laid low with a cold. Although it (thank goodness) did not settle in my chest, it did hang on for quite a while, making air travel rather a trial (my ears are still popping occasionally). After we got home from the Pacific Northwest on March 5, I spent the next week catching up on mail, email, newspapers, newsgroups—oh, yes, and work (luckily not too much of the last). Still, I did manage to get in three walking days before last weekend, when it started raining; we got four inches over the next three days, and the rain never let up long enough to suggest that it would be possible to squeeze in a 40-minute walk.

The bottom line is that this morning’s walk was only my fifth so far this month, and one day out of four is not a very good track record. I will try to do better in the future.

As for thinking, the way things have been going lately, you would not want to know my thoughts, which have been somewhat blistering at times. But I did see something amusing this morning: several of the downtown streets are blocked off for the Arts & Crafts Festival, and a sign in the middle of one of the semi-closed ones said “NO THUR STREET.”