04.22.02 - 1:00 p.m.

last week, spring sprang straight to summer, so i guess it's only fair that this week it spills into fall. it's chilly outside, or, not quite chilly but cool - but the sun is shining brilliantly, and the sky is the impossible blue of sunny days after torrential rain, when all the pollution and humidity has been washed from the sky and the whole world is clean again.

i like a nice, clean world. i'm not so good at the upkeep, but i get an incredible rush of satisfaction from a nice, clean world. though, i have a tiny apartment an an awful lot of stuff - mostly books - but plenty of other attendant junk as well, so it's hard to get it all half-way decent at the same time. outside though, in summertime, i can fill the little porch with pots and pots. i'm a sucker for plants, especially after the long bare gray chill of winter, i'm always amazed at how it all happens all over again.

first the forsythia, early in the season. heck, this year we had such a warm december that there was forsythia blooming then, but i suppose that doesn't count since it did cool down after that. so, first the forsythia, and the early bulbs that start peaking their heads up outta the ground when you're still certain it's winter. january, february, just to remind you what's coming, just to hearten you to get through the cold.

crocus, so tiny and delicate, peaking through and flowering in the snow. then daffodils, which are my favorite spring bulbs, because the massed flowers are so cheery, and last so very long if it doesn't get too hot. i heard a story on NPR that last fall after september 11, some garden catalogue person received a call from her bulb supplier in the netherlands, asking what he could do. and she thought about it, and asked for whatever bulbs he could spare. he sent a half-million of his best daffodils, and then the city bought another half-million, and they planted these million bulbs everywhere there was land in the city: in abandoned parks, and street dividers, and just all over the place, in wealthy neighborhoods and the poorest neighborhoods. all varieties: yellow and white, peach-fringed and otherwise, teeeeny little ones (which are actually my favorite) and big ones too. and now (?) they're blooming all over nyc, like a golden ribbon. and i think that's just so cool.

then there are hyacinths, grape hyacinths, and creeping phlox, which isn't so much a bulb but does bloom very early in the season and just makes carpets of color before the trees are fully leafed. it'll bloom again in the fall, as long as we have enough cool but not cold autumn days. and tulips, which are lovely and later than daffodils, but which always seem so tempermental to me. and the flowers don't last long, don't last as long as daffodils, but any flower over which dutch trading companies waged, like, corporate war has gotta have some romantic appeal, yes?

and of course, the grass is greening, and wild violets en masse shade the newly greened grass to purple. if you're ridding your lawn of weeds, i hope you don't rid it of wild violets. i'm a fan, they're just like mini-pansies (in fact, i'm sure they're closely related) and they're just so lush and breathtaking early in the season.

and before the trees have leafed, the flowering trees put on their full display. and as the other trees are beginning to bud, the flowering trees - cherry and redbud, pear and dogwood, these pink things i can't name, and so on - are already losing their petals. but in doing so, they scatter them on the sidewalks and streets, so whereever you walk you feel like royalty, treading on flower petals strewn by invisible handmaidens, so that your feet need never touch the base ground.

and now the trees are finally beginning to come fully into leaf, and the variety of green is incredible. i'm always taken aback, anew, every spring, at how many shades of green there are at this time of year. the rich green of the growing grass, the pale yellow-green of early leaves against a darker palate of smoke-green from other varieties of trees, and all framed against a distant blue or turbulently gray sky. the world feels closer, more intimate, the long gray vistas lost to close green shadows that intimate at the wild riot of summer overgrowth to come.

hee. and that's just outside! on my porch, i have pansies still blooming despite last week's heat. they'll like this week better, they will, and i'll be able to enjoy them for another few days. i have petunias planted in a big planter with alyssum and vinca and asparagus fern, and it makes a lovely grouping if i do say so myself. (okay! i'm proud of that one!) and other pots of petunias - white and purple this year - already in bloom. and, uhm, a wandering jew, or like, a cousin of the wandering jew with dark purple leaves and delicate pink flowers. i love the way the dark leaves glisten in the sun, and i'm going to get a plant stand for it. or possibly give it to my mom for mother's day. heh! and, i have lettuce that i sowed last week already sprouting. everything seems to grow so fast, i wonder if i could SEE it growing if i watched. but i don't have the patience and would probably miss it anyway. and i have an assortment of herbs to repot: lemon basil, oregano, cloves, rosemary, thyme, chocolate mint, vic's mint. and. and. and.

it all makes me so. damn. happy! heh. cheesy as that is.