Pemberton Frams, around the corner from The Orphanage, is coming alive again.  The tables are back out and dotted with hardier stock.  I've already been to pick up some seeds for the garden...


If it was bright and pretty I tossed it in my basket.  Last summer I had some visitor to my garden look down his nose at my cleome and tell me, "these were all the rage two or three years back."  And I know there are a lot of botanical fashionistas out there with their fingers on the pulse of haute-mode jardinage.  But I'm a simple guy.  Call me a bumpkin, but bright and pretty is enough for me.

Especially after over half a year of living in black and white.  Is it just me or is winter getting longer every year and summer shorter?  I don't feel like I was even experiencing SAD this time around, I just shut down entirely.  All winter I was sort of in my "this isn't happening" zone.  It was working out well for me up until this last Spring tease.

So I'm standing at the deli at Pemberton yesterday waiting for my reuben and talking to the woman behind the counter.  She says she thinks it's her fault whenever we're having a run of great weather and then it turns brutal on us all the sudden.  She says, "every time I say the weather's nice, it turns nasty."

I'm like, "so you're the one responsible!"

Another woman, with a Southern accent, pshaws us. 

"I'm from Louisiana," she twangs. "Y'all ain't seen nothin' up here.  I think people just like to complain."

Well, that's obvious.  I'm assuming this isn't meant as an insight.

"It's some consolation," I say, with a wan smile.

And she pshaws me again! 

She was throwing her weight around, meteorologically speaking.  I mean, what am I supposed to say to someone who's been through Katrina?  "Yeah, well, I had to shovel my walk twice today"?  "I'm sick of wearing a scarf"?  At least I'm not stranded on my roof waiting for FEMA, or stuck in the Superdome with 30,000 of my closest friends, or floating face-down in flood water from Lake Pontchartrain.

I can tell you, if I'd been through Katrina, I'd have bitched a blue streak about that, too.  Everybody complains about the weather.  And those who don't are complaining about everybody complaining about the weather. 

But it's been six months of this shit and I've had enough.  I'm ready for Spring, gaddammit.  And for those of you who have a problem with that, if you can't handle a little complaining, I suggest you head back to your beloved hurricane alley where the griping is apparently more to your liking.