Every year I cut a basketful of hydrangea for the neighbour lady who dries them to use on her xmas tree. And every year I think: what a lovely idea, and then don’t do it myself… being stuck as I am on the ancient Elmo and Fozzie Bear I gave single Peter a hundred years ago and which he still loves, and the battered white dove that used to be the top of my own tiny singlehood tree—and how could we not hang the hideous Starship Enterprise that no one knows where it came from but if encouraged will tell you to live long and prosper. Ugliest thing you’ve ever seen but it is a nice message.

You should be warned there’s no point to this post except to say the heat wave’s getting to me and thinking about winter has a pleasing effect. Frankly, I’m about one step away from doing a whole pointless wintery riff that could easily morph from tree decor to ice-fishing to memories of snow forts and pretending icicles are freezies and having my face washed on the way to school while wearing big brown rubber boots with buckles, boots so big you put your whole big shoe inside them, and homemade mittens and a scratchy wool hat with pompoms—and didn’t there used to be more snow when we were little? and wasn’t everything uphill? and five miles away?—and how our parents let us go toboganning on our own, at dusk, on Suicide Hill (which, if you didn’t hit a tree, landed you in a parking lot, screaming and laughing hysterically as you swerved past cars)… anything to forget for a single minute that it’s 248 humid degrees out there…

Alas, it’s too late. My fingers are already sliding off the keys and my brain is a fried plantain chip. (in which case may I simply say this: let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! if only for five minutes…)

Once upon a time there was a very pretty wisteria vine. It was May and things were fine and fragrant and there was nothing to fear.

By July the purple petals had fallen onto the patio and were swept away by the people who lived there. The vine had grown leafy and become a shady place under which the people sipped chardonnay and nibbled sandwiches all summer long. 

Then came October with its spooky witchy ways and blustery habits, dislodging the leaves of the lovelyy wisteria, turning it into something resembling a launch pad of ten thousand alien pods, each of which threatened to disengage the eyes of innocent stargazers.

All winter the people watched the pods dangle menacingly outside their window, fearing for their noggins every time they stepped through their door.

How will we ever remove those ten thousand pods from our wonderufl vine?? they wondered as they gazed at starry solstice skies through swimming goggles.

Then one day in March a great snapping and cracking filled the air. Tiny round missiles hurled themselves at the windows and Jake the Cat meowed something that sounded like: wtf? as he took refuge under the kitchen table.

No, wait. That was me.

The cacophony of cracking continued for a couple of days. And while the sound initially unsettled the people something wicked, they soon realized—around hour 42—what was happening. The pods, it seems, dry into sticks over winter, then twist open—that was the cracking—each releasing four or five penny-sized seeds. That was the pinging against the window.

As soon as it dawned on them that the world was not, in fact, ending, the people relaxed, poured some pinot and began to enjoy the show.

Of course, by then it was almost over.

These people, they’re bright(ish), but nothing stellar.


Mother Nature on the other hand—that’s one smart dame.

snowdrops