I was in the neighborhood on business, and decided to drop into my garden in the Fenway today.  The last time I was there it was under about a foot of snow.  My lock's rusted, so I had to jump the fence.  There were some other gardeners scratching about in their plots, but it's a little nippy yet to be out there in earnest.  I was just there, myself, to get the lay of the land again. 

Aside from my sedum, I've got some grape hyacinth poking up, some siberian iris, and my spectacular tree peony is awakening...


And thank God.  It's time. 

The funny thing about this winter was it didn't seem that desperate.  I have endured far worse winters.  But winter is not a season, for me, that becomes more endearing with the passing years.  Like that tedious guest at the dinner party, it always overstays its welcome.  If you manage to maneuver him to the door, he will stand in the threshold for an hour saying his goodbyes.  Winter has no social skills.

And April is his giggling girlfriend.  Half his age, dressed like a street walker, she's a drunken tease.  No tact.  She's got her tongue in his ear one minute, flashing her beaver to the room the next, then blurting out obscenities and laughing like a drain.  You can't ask them to leave.  It would cause an even bigger scene.  You're stuck with them.  Some party, huh?

When I'd finished surveying the scene at the Victory Gardens, I took a walk to the MFA to see those giant baby heads they just installed on the lawn...


That's modern aht for ya.  I mean, what kind of person buries a baby up to its chin for art?  Actually, two babies!  No scruples.  What kind of an example is that to parents out there? 

I wandered the grounds a bit after that.  That de Kooning they've got outside the west entrance has grown on me over the years, I have to say...


It looks to me like something that should be much, much smaller than it is.  Something you should be able to hold in your hands.  (In fact, the sculpture was conceived on a much smaller scale and enlarged as an afterthought.) The result of the size is that the sculpture looks to have been modeled by enormous hands, and there is something both marvelously sinuous and sensuous about it texturally, and at the same time grotesque on account of its scale.  And the fact that it is called Standing Form while hardly standing or a form adds somehow to its endearing monstrousness. 

From there I decided to grab a burrito at El Pelon.  On the way I passed Dali's bicycle hitched to a post on St. Peterborough St...


It's not warm enough for bicycles to be melting, that's for sure. 

I meandered a bit more from there, and while it wasn't quite an epic walk in the end, I'm just getting warmed up.  It's April.