Baboon Blog Redux, Poems

Revelers Beware!

52 Comments

Today’s high temperature in the Twin Cities is expected to hit the mid-60’s.

A seasonal giddiness warning has been issued, effective all day and doubly so during happy hour.  We are on a 24 hour recklessness watch.

Gloomy realists will note that when Spring arrives, the dividing line is usually not drawn so sharply.  For every mid-March warm spell, there’s a St. Patrick’s Day blizzard on the way.

Sometimes it’s good to look in the record books for proof – thus today’s Baboon blog redux.

During what  passed for the Spring in the year 2013, America’s Singsong Poet Laureate, Schuyler Tyler Wyler, climbed into his drafty garret to produce a May Day Ditty that, this year, is more appropriate for March.

Embrace the May, but be a cynic.
Mother Nature’s schizophrenic.

She brings us air so sweet and mild,
and then a freezing zephyr wild.

She’ll green some grass, hey nonny nonny,
then kick your ass a little, honey.

Drape floral garlands ’round your feet,
then fill your face with freezing sleet.

Get out and do your May Pole dance,
but put some hot sauce in your pants.

Though May bringst bees and buds to flower
Conditions changeth by the hour.

What will you do to enthusiastically but realistically accept the gift of an early-season warm day?

52 thoughts on “Revelers Beware!”

  2. I will go for a walk. I will not wear my spring clothes. If I see people walking around in shorts and light shirts with no jackets I will wonder what they are thinking. Even in the middle of the winter I often see people dressed in spring clothing. They act as though cold weather has no effect on them. I don’t believe it. Even on a really warm early season day when spring clothes might be okay I am not ready to shed all of my winter clothes.

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    3. So Jim, were you that guy I saw walking around with a winter coat, scarf, wool hat, and sorels? I suppose you had long underwear on underneath it all, too.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I had a severely sprained, bruised ankle and foot a month ago, so walking is still out, darn it. Still too much swelling. So I will count the tulips emerging in the front yard and sit in the sun while I watch my dogs chase each other.

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  4. I left my jacket on the hook this morning when I went to work; it was chilly but I figured I really wouldn’t want it at the end of the day!

    I am normally a gloomy naysayer about early spring, always waiting for that proverbial other shoe to drop. My first year living in Minnesota (`74) we got 11 inches of snow on April 7. That kinda set my thinking pattern from then on.

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    1. My mindset is enjoy the warm weather when it comes, but don’t pack away the winter gear until I’m pretty darn sure that winter won’t make a return appearance. Usually that’s sometime in May. It makes for a darn cluttered entryway when you have gear for every kind of weather ready to go.

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  6. I also worry that I’ll lose my winter “attitude” when we get early spring. I love the cold during winter and can easily walk around my house in flip flops and only wear my big heavy coat when it gets below 10 degrees, but once I lose that “attitude” then 35 degrees makes me shiver!

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  7. I will go for a long walk and then soak up some Vitamin D while relaxing with a good book. I’m not ready to get my shorts out quite yet (we still have two state high school tournaments and St. Patrick’s Day to get past) but the Cuddle Duds are staying in the dresser drawer.

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      1. It is good to have “something good to read” always, BiR. I usually have three books going at once. My living room book is a classic description of Cape Cod. My bathroom book is an anthology of writing about upland bird hunting. My car book (used when I am early for appointments and have time to kill) is the brilliant memoir of the 1960s in San Francisco written by actor Peter Coyote.

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        1. Like you Steve – I have books in several places. Work, car, bedroom. Magazines in the bathroom!

          You car book – is it Sleeping Where You Are?

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        2. I’m wasting my life on People Magazines and Netflix. Called them yesterday and learned that a whole new season of House of Cards was added to their playlist. I couldn’t shut it down until 4AM

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        3. I’ve been thinking that maybe I should try a couple of episodes of Parks & Rec. Anybody else a fan?

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        6. When you get it, vs, pay attention to the specificity and clarity of his recall of earlier times. He will mention people’s names with ease (and then go on to list the names of their children, girlfriends or dogs!). I don’t see how he could retain so much detail, and it is all the more remarkable when you consider that he was drunk or high on drugs most of the time he was writing about. My only guess: he kept a journal, but he never says so.

          You’ll remember that I knew Peter (under a different name) in college. Fascinating fellow. Extremely aware of himself.

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        1. This got way down, so I will explain it only took 10 minutes at Social Security. I am most of the way through the mess. They do not seem to have dome anything. with the info. Watching the old account while waiting for new cards and new checks. Our SSN’s are frozen. We owe a few hundred on taxes not yet paid, so it does not seem they can do much with our tax info. We do not have money anywhere else, nothing on our tax records for them to use that way. Only have to get new numbers to two retirement associations and two insurance companies.

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  9. I’ll go for a walk, but take my D in pill form today. Although the sun looks promising, realistically it is still too far away to deliver vitamin D in sufficient amounts.

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  11. Three days ago, the Strib reported that is was the warmest day in history: 70. They wrote that we’d reached 1 degree higher than the previous record set in 1982. Another record’s being set this season: the bay ice going out. With two basically un-Minnesota-like winters in a row, I’m pretty sure that the weather will incrementally slide into spring, then incrementally into summer. Just as fall into winter the last two years has.

    I’ve become an even more ardent believer in global warming now. I think of poor Al Gore’s efforts to warn us and how that backfired on his intent because his alarm rang about 20 years too soon. That’s provided the anti-science folks with proof that it’s a hoax.

    My only plans for going outside are to tan as soon as it’s a sunny, 65 degree day with no breeze and trim back several shrubs. I’ve learned the hard way to refrain from planting flowers until early May.

    Last fall on a whim, I brought two colea plants inside that had been in a flower box just to see if I could keep it alive in winter. They were about 8″ tall. I now have a gorgeous maroon floor plant 4′ tall! I’ve even had to wire it to a tall goose neck floor lamp in order to help it stand upright. The
    only problem is that it has to be watered daily or it pouts by drooping.

    I’ve always been free to leave my cats alone for even a week-long trip by leaving a mountain of dry cat food and the toilet lid up. Now, I’m stuck with a plant that needs daily watering.

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    1. soon you can return it to the outside and be free again. Sadly, I neglected my colea this winter and now it is dead.

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      2. Do you think it can withstand the trauma of transplantation? This success reminds me of the Amish Friendship Bread craze. I couldn’t stop making it and gave away a hundred starter portions. This colea thing could easily become a penchant for growing floor plants for every member of the family!

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    2. if you snip off the top 4 feet it wont need so much water. take each leaf off the snipped part and try sprouting them in soil to see if you can start 20 or 30 new plants. those coleus plants are a bout a dollar in the spring. go on your vacation

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  12. I took a medium-length walk (1.5 miles one way) this morning. I walked to and from my eye doctor appointment. Unfortunately, I find it unbearably bright outside after having my eyes dilated, so I’m keeping indoors for a while now. (My eyes stay dilated for about 6 hours; right now I’m sitting indoors and typing this with sunglasses on.) With one exception in the last 15 years or so, it is always a very bright, sunny day when I have an eye doctor appointment. So next year, around this date, if you want to know what day will definitely be sunny, just ask me when my eye doctor appointment is scheduled. I can’t guarantee it will be as warm as today, but it will be sunny.

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  13. Seasons were of greater concern to me when I lived farther north, not that they mattered much then. Now I am rather que sera sera about them.

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  14. I inaugurate spring each year by starting my barefoot-in-sandals season as soon as the snow has melted. This year, that was a little over a week ago. It feels so good to liberate my feet from the confines of shoes.

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  15. We have blooming crocuses in our front yard. We have had temps in the upper 60’s and lower 70’s for the past week. “Keep cold, young orchard, keep cold”.

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  17. Our funny afternoon: we came home from dealing with our identity issue, stage 1. Sandy took her large tray of pills off the top of the refrigerator and dropped it, many of the pills going under the fridge. It is a bit of a task to move our refrigerator out, but I told her it was about time for me to clean under there. We got all her pills picked up and resorted. The roller on the fridge did crush one of her pills, the most expensive of course. I cleaned the floor, rolled back in the fridge. An hour later she dropped an open full can of pop in front of the fridge. But we had all the windows open and enjoyed the fresh air as I cleaned it again.

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    2. my recall is that the drug store has a deal where if you need to replace a crused lost or down the drain/toilet pill they can give you a new one.no charge. try it it might be as easy as asking

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  19. Farmers here are chomping at the bit to get into the field to plant. It is way too early, I think. I will start the New Mexico peppers this weekend.

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    1. I, for one, am still appreciating the quiet calm before the spring farming rush…
      Oats can withstand a moderate cold snap and even get snowed on after emergence. Last year I planted oats 4/15. Did some fieldwork a few days before that and applied fertilizer. So thats my frame of reference.

      Corn and beans are not so tolerant of cold / snow.
      Not to mention, around here anyway, crop insurance won’t cover corn planted before April 15th. And soybeans is end of April I think…

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      1. did you ever think about starting bens crop insurance company? i think you could decide to do it beforre the insurance companies acknowledge thermal warming . get al gore as your spokesman

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