Summer Air

Is this weather some kind of April fool's joke? How can it feel, even smell, like summer on the first day of April? As I perused the yard today, in flip flops (in Wisconsin, in April!) red edges were peeking out of their tulip stalks and daffodils that were looking like bunches of grass are bulging out at the top. The dusty beds needed water yesterday. Elliott was more than willing to help pour the watering cans and refill them. But we didn't tempt nature with attaching the hose.

We have an arched gate on the side of our house that leads to the backyard. The small wood door sits just off-level, making the latch nearly impossible to close routinely. Instead, we prop it on the cement to keep it open, or let the breeze hold it closed. Creeping up the side of lattice arch is a vine that I left alone last fall. Everything else -- except the trees and a few bushes, I leveled off to the ground. Most of it was overgrown anyway, and needed more pruning than I could do evenly. Now I check almost daily to see which of them have survived. Many have. One of the bushes I left alone, however, has a rotten root and is barely hanging on to the soil. It probably didn't help that we built a snow fort over the top of it.

The vine on the arched gate still has its crinkly leaves that never really turned yellow or red last fall. They just froze over and stayed on the vine. More than once I thought, as I was shoveling the walk past them, why didn't I just cut them down? I guess I'll do it in the spring. But yesterday as I passed through to get chalk or a rake or some other prop for the boys' impromptu front yard rock band, two shoots of green poked out from the brown, whithered vine. The buds were in the same spots as the dried out, frozen-over leaves, but plump and green. As I looked closer, the vine is covered with them. I plucked off a dead leaf easily, but am not about to do that for all of them. Somehow it will figure out how to cast off the leaves so the new ones can thrive. Somehow the vine will turn green and eventually flower, even as its leaves from last year return to the dirt. And it will probably endure the cool April showers -- even snow showers -- that are likely to pass through. Until then, it is out there enjoying a 70 degree evening, with a metal snow shovel still propped up against the imperfect gate.