Days of Dandelions

 

Spring is here, and soon the grass and lawnmowers. Do people still strive for the perfect lawn, to walk on a carpet of grass--lush and green, with no unwanted weeds like clover or dandelions?

 The grass thrives in cool and damp conditions, like the gardens of the great mansions of England.   Maybe there is still an envy of the aristocracy in striving for the perfect lawn. To have enough space to grow nothing but grass with ornamental borders.  

Not like a crowded  cottage garden, where what  available space there is is used for growing lettuce and beans and eggplants,  tomatoes and peppers,  and lots of flowers, too.  

And what of the so-called weeds?  

Clover is a soft and resilient ground cover.  It also enriches the soil.

Dandelions have many uses.  Young leaves are edible.  The root is medicinal.  You can make a healing salve with dandelions. You can make dandelion tea, and dandelion wine.  

Rabbits eat the stems like spaghetti.

And bees love the flowers. Imagine, dandelion honey!

Oh yes, children love dandelions, too. They look like something a child would draw, in chalk on a sidewalk,  or a yellow crayon on paper, a round yellow flower like the sun.

April is National Poetry Month

 

 

 

April  may be the most poetic month---alive again, the earth in bloom---flowers and new green leaves.  Buds on the lilacs,  and today, the magnolias are blooming!

And how many poets have been inspired to write about April and Spring?

Wordsworth and the daffodils--

and ee cummings--in just spring---

Chaucer's  opening of Canterbury Tales --When that April with showers sweet with fruit  (modern English translation)

and moody modern Mr. Eliot--April is the cruelest month...

Simon and Garfunkel  sang  "April come she will, when streams are ripe and swelled with rain..."

 There are Japanese poets who write about the fleeting beauty of cherry blossoms.  There are  French poets writing about rain...

 And Shakespeare--"thou art thy mothers glass, and she in thee beholds the lovely April of her prime" 

 And William Carlos Williams---the alphabet of the trees is fading in the song of leaves...

April--love and spring  

when everything is new again. 

March Madness and April Fools

 

 

 When I talk about March Madness,  I don't mean college basketball or Donald Trump indictments. When I talk about April Fools I don't mean road construction, potholes or guys wearing shorts in  breezy 45 degrees.  I'm talking about the weather.

I'm talking about Severe Weather Season and 70 mile an hour winds, power outages and tornado warnings. 

I'm talking about Friday March 31, when the Chicago area was under a tornado watch until 10:00 PM.       The watch was lifted at 8:30 PM.

The chance for severe weather stretched from Arkansas and Missouri to Indiana and Ohio.  The Storm Prediction Center was not joking that there was a chance of particularly dangerous conditions. 

Friday morning was mild and calm, temps in the mid-60's.  Enjoy it while it lasts, said my neighbor,  walking his dog in the alley. 

I packed my scram bag, just in case. This includes--flashlight, batteries, a jacket, important papers, checkbook,  cash,  a portable radio, and an extra black sweater. I do not have a mobile phone. I do have a phone jack in the basement for the landline and an outlet to plug in the battery for the laptop. 

What's in your scram bag?  Do you have multiple ways to receive weather updates?  Have a safety plan.

 In the evening, I watched weather updates on WGN-TV.  The whole weather team was there.  Tom Skilling is great! He is so calm, yet excited about squall lines. 

Yes, there were multiple tornadoes! People were killed.  Little Rock, Arkansas was impacted. A roof was blown off the Apollo Theater in Belvidere, Illinois. There were tornadoes in Iowa and Indiana.   You can read the Accu-Weather  reports  here. 

Saturday, April 1  was brisk and cooler. There was not much damage here in south Oak Park.  It was a Saturday, and there were clementines at the Carnival Grocery.  Pigeons were dancing on the ledges of the Bank. Life was beautiful, miraculous and ordinary.