Spring thing(s)

For all that everybody is waiting for spring and watching for any little sign of it, I'm constantly caught out by something or other by thinking I have more time. Like, I saw my first fruit fly in the house last week, which means no more soft bananas on the counter till it gets cold out in the fall.

More crazy-making is the sun/windburn I got on my face last week. Okay, the windburn is probably not something I could have anticipated but sunburn in April is definitely not on my radar and I didn't get my giant strawlike summer hat out to defend against it. After five days of a hurty face and a ton of lotion and then pimples for pity's sake but no abatement of the hurty I corrected that error, and put on the hat to go outside.

Thing is, I just feel so idjitlike wearing that hat with a lot of dour black and grey in April. It's the sort of hat that Andie McDowell would wear to a summer wedding in England.

So I was quite pleased yesterday to score this dour grey alternative:


Bringing me to a nicer thing about spring - the shopping. True, this hat doesn't stay on as well as the bigger summeryer one, and will definitely take flight when I'm running someplace (as I do daily it seems, as I'm always late). Also the brim shades my face at the expense of my vision. But we will not quibble. Instead I will show you the fruits of my labours during the first try-out with the new hat:


It's really tremendously satisfying to pull up dandelions - an excellent stress-reliever. Sometimes you have to really hunt for them, they are so subtle, and you think you've got them all... and then one or six bloom and WHAM you can just dive in there.

The more years you dig them up, too, the fewer and fewer you get, a mixed blessing that sends me over to my neighbours' lawn if I'm feeling really stressed. They're so relaxed they don't mind, but they're moving - I wonder if the new tenant will want to pull up her own dandelions?

I suppose I could always go over to the park.