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flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2013-05-02 12:02 pm
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Sudden spring, now with added vengeance

Sunday night I slept in flannel pants, long-sleeve shirt, hoodie, sleep hood, and probably fuzzy socks as well, on flannel sheets, with the windows shut, and grateful not to need the furnace as I did Friday. Wednesday night I slept in a t-shirt, on cotton, with the window fan in the window on high. It's still not oppressively warm. Seasonable, for recent definitions of 'seasonable', because even the Weather Underground, that bases its stats on 1995 to the present and thus has average lows of 11 (to compare with the official "since '38" one of 4.7), records lows of 2 in May.

The university sakura down the street from work, that were buds on Tuesday, were full-blown bloom yesterday, to the delight and surprise of our Japanese parents. My plum is white snow and I must clip a branch to fragrance up my kitchen. I weeded dandelions last night and raked the cherry pits of yesteryear from the not-yet sprouting beds. Must buy garden bags to put them in. And in a fit of spring pro-action, I called the requisite city department to come remove the two derelict bikes locked outside work, a pain always but a disaster in summer when, she sniffs, the amateurs get back on their bikes. 'OK, we'll send a crew to remove them,' the clerk says. 'Will that that be all?' 'Um, don't you need a description of the bicycles?' I suggest mildly. 'So you can tell them from the other bicycles?' that are locked to the bike posts on city property as you ascertained from me at the start? Ah bureaucracy. And ah bureaucracy again: I hope we qualify as city property and not university

Meanwhile Alberta and Thunder Bay are having snow. (Hence those lows of 2) I umm wouldn't mind that either, but I can bicycle in this and so am content. Cannot brunch where I'd like because not only is someone filming on Markham St and one's way is barred every five feet by a (polite and apologetic, I grant you, but then they'd better be) production assistant, but they're filming in my restaurant.

[identity profile] yumiyoshi.livejournal.com 2013-05-02 09:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Ahhh, the ume and the sakura sound lovely <3

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2013-05-03 12:57 am (UTC)(link)
They're the one thing that reconciles me to spring.

But of course our sakura are not a patch on Washington's.
chomiji: Sue from CLAMP's Clover series, with the caption Growing (Sue - growing)

[personal profile] chomiji 2013-05-03 02:20 am (UTC)(link)

DC sakura all done for the year. We've moved on to azaleas and lilacs, now.

But yes, one of my Saskatchewan f-listers was most unhappy with the snow the other day.

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2013-05-03 04:27 am (UTC)(link)
So early? (Is it early for DC?) How sad. But lilacs are a good substitute.

[identity profile] yumiyoshi.livejournal.com 2013-05-03 01:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Well, they were blooming wonderfully, and were supposed to keep blooming for ~2 weeks. I made plans to bike down to the tidal basin that weekend ... except then three days into said two weeks, a violent thunderstorm hit. And that was the end of that. That's the problem with things whose inherent attractiveness includes "extremely ephemeral". XD;

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2013-05-03 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
I always thought the 'beautiful because brief' things was perilously close to sour grapes, or at least. making a virtue out of necessity. OTOH cherries here never last two weeks unless you get a freak cold spell (and calm) that snaps them in place. The university ones were already showing a few fallen petals yesterday, one day after they all sprang into bloom.

[identity profile] liralen.livejournal.com 2013-05-03 04:02 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, I love the scent of them...

Enjoy them!

[identity profile] flemmings.livejournal.com 2013-05-03 04:26 am (UTC)(link)
Every year I do. The faintest sweet scent, 'is it there or not?'

OTOH one of our kids has a tiny baby brother, and whenever Mom comes to pick her up, baby on hip, I smell Japanese jinchouge-- winter daphne. Asked Mom what her perfume was, but she doesn't wear any. Or use cream on the baby. Kid just naturally smells sweet.