Yesterday was yet another glorious day. What is going on here?

And I was able to spend a good deal of the afternoon in the garden, turning what had looked a few days ago like a hopeless sea of lavender and pink into, well, a slightly more orderly sea of lavender and pink. I will have to consult a colorist before purchasing next spring's bulbs, that's for sure.

Live and learn.

The lilacs (I have two) are in full blossom. I am lucky to have them (they came with the plot). The scent of lilac is very relaxing. My dear friend Csaba used to put a little drop on my pillow whenever I slept over at his place.

Yesterday I was weeding and I heard someone call me from over my fence.

"Excuse me, sir?"

It was a guy about my age.

"Could I smell your lilac?"

Well, how could I say no to that?

He behaved himself admirably well, smelled my lilac, and was on his way.

My columbine (a gift from my evil garden gnome) has gone stark-raving mad:


I had a lot of weeding to do in the beds, and my little lawn needed mowing, which gave me the opportunity to break out the beloved old push mower:


Doesn't look like much, I know, but that's the point, innit?

I know I have rhapsodized about the mower before, but so long as you don't have to mow an acre of lawn—and why should you?—this little baby will do the trick.

So satisfying.

I had my lemonade waiting for me on my little brick patio next to my aluminum yard chair and my copy of Bas Van Fraassen's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space, under my little lilac tree, so that when I'd finished I could relax, nap (I have been reading page 5, "The Use of Coordinates," for the last seven years, and have found nothing—not even zolpidem—that puts me out faster and leaves me feeling so fully refreshed), and survey the fruits of my labor:


My little kingdom.

My nap was cut short by some Parks Dept boys in their cherry-picker/wood-chipper thingy bearing chainsaws and blaring "Bad to the Bone." They were there to remove the dead branches from two big willows at the end of Row E.

Now, normally I would find their antics charming. They were young, good-looking, and obviously full of spunk. But I do have priorities. And my naps are sacrosanct. Even their sleeveless tees (exposing some very shapely biceps), their bad sunglasses, and their Southie drawls could not win me over this time.

After "Bad to the Bone," it was Queen's "Bicycle Race." And one of them shouted "WAR!" And it was dueling chainsaws for about twenty minutes from there. I'm afraid I don't know who won in the end. But finally they buggered off.

And by the time they did, it was nearly time for me to, too. It was around four, I'd say. I had some weeds and lawn clippings to drop into the compost at the other end of row E, down by the path that runs along the Muddy River, where most of the cruising goes on.

There were four or five guys loitering under another willow next to the path, waiting to see who would come along—I'm always impressed by their stamina. Some can wait all day. Into weeks. Months. Years. (Been there, got the T-shirt to prove it.) They weren't making a ruckus, just chatting amongst themselves, and turning to stare at anyone coming down the pike.

But as I dumped my wheelbarrow, a young fellow, tall and thin, half-naked (top half) and all glistening with sweat (it was nearly ninety degrees in the sun yesterday) leapt out from a row of gardens several meters away, and started doing what might have been the most unsavory little striptease I've ever seen. Still, a striptease is a little like a car-crash. You can't not watch.

He didn't have much to strip off, is the thing. So maybe less a car-crash than, say, somebody toppling over on their Vespa while trying to park it on the curb.

Anyway, he pulled down his pants to expose his black jockstrap. I think I must have shrugged, going back to my business, because that seemed to elicit a little harrumph from him. Though he was standing closer to them than to me, the guys under the willow didn't seem to be paying much attention to the show (I think they'd probably seen it about fifteen, twenty times so far that day).

He cleared his throat a couple of times, rather too stridently for my taste, practically demanding my attention. But after picking some rubbish out of my compost and throwing it back in my wheelbarrow, I turned away and made to go.

Which is when he started braying like a donkey.

Now, that got me curious.

But I couldn't very well indulge my curiosity then and there, however much I'd like to have done. I mean, anyone standing out in the open in a public park in the height of the afternoon, with his britches at his knees, grabbing his bits and braying like a donkey, however well-hung he might be, has got to be mental.

Not that there's anything wrong with mental. I mean, if you're well-hung.

And my curiosity is pretty powerful. I tend to follow where it leads, especially when it comes to this sort of thing. And I'm usually not disappointed when I do. I mean, you get what you get.

But no. Not this time.

I took my little wheelbarrow, and went back to my pretty little pink and lavender Shangri-La, locking my little gate behind me. NO DONKEYS ALLOWED!

But as I sat there monitoring my heart-palpitations, I thought, anyway, Donkey Boy's got the right idea, even if he is half-mad. And if you are then spring's your season. I mean, he might as well have been a smelly little faun...

...and I, for one, am emphatically pro-faun. Though increasingly, with age, I see charms in propriety, too. Hmm.

Whatever your stance on flowers and fauns, you must agree that spring is not the season of love so much as the season of lust. Lust is not necessarily anathema to love, either. Lust is the easy part. But love must endure a long, dark, bitter winter before it's worthy of the name.

In spring, lust is enough.