International Porch Day / One Good Thing

The satisfying ritual of cleaning the porch

Ask anyone around here: This spring has been THE WORST.

The unrelenting rain. Fog enveloping the hills. Near-freezing temperatures every single morning. Today’s high temperature nudging toward — but never reaching — 50 degrees.

Welcome to May.

This morning I took off my barn jacket and switched back into down. The annuals I so optimistically bought at the beginning of the month sit, unplanted, in their flats.

Granted, we are greening like crazy. Trees are fully leafed out. The fallow fields have sprouted into a velvety green that honestly resembles fur.

[I love the stripes of spring… this photo from earlier this month]

Here’s what I wrote to my friend Mary this morning:

“We are having a punishing spring. Rain every single day. Just now it is 40 degrees outside. The ground is absolutely sodden and -- this is not exactly the most inviting way to enjoy the lilacs, which have just bloomed and will very quickly blow away. But wow -- our landscape is especially Irish right now. We have the greenest greens in the galaxy.”

Given the fact that according to the weather outlook this nonsense will continue for the foreseeable future — I’ve resorted to a last-ditch effort to force this season toward summer … sort of the way you might force a bulb to bloom.

[This morning’s inviting temperature.]

And the long-range outlook is:

ClOUDY, WITH A CHANCE OF DEPRESSION.

Today the sun almost emerged from behind the rain-swollen clouds. Almost.

I had a big decision to make. And so — I did. Like a baseball coach deciding on a rain delay, this morning — I called it:

It’s PORCH DAY!

Porch Day starts with the ritual tossing of last year’s Christmas wreath.

Yes — this has remained on the wall of my porch since last December.

And now …. THE FLING!

[Click for a slo-mo fling. And hey — don’t judge me …]

After the wreath toss, and after sweeping up a season’s worth of leftover dregs (bee carcasses and such) — all of the furniture gets pulled off the porch and onto the lawn.

This is not fun. Nothing about this is fun. But this is an investment in our future. Because every day during July and August we will bookend our days with porch-time. Morning coffee on the old wicker couch; evening supper holding our plates on our laps. In-between — lounging, napping, reading, knitting.

[One of many porch parties held last summer …]

But first … I hose off the floor. Then I give it a sudsy mopping. Then again with the hose for another rinse.

[Despite her resemblance to a dust mop and her eagerness to help, Molly is mainly in the way…]

During the drying period, I lounge in a porch chair on the lawn. Waiting. This is my favorite part — the lounging.

I swab the floor one more time with a squirt-on floor polish.

More drying. More lounging.

I wrestle the furniture back up the steps, arrange it in its customary setting, and then I try out every chair and couch — yes, wearing my winter coat — and look out at our lovely view, which seems so very soft and inviting, even though it is too cold to play.

[Crowded, mismatchy — but comfortable.]

In the meantime, I’ll try to enjoy this very peculiar season, which I’m calling The Great Greening.

***** In other news … I’ve just started reading this book

… recommended by my friend Laura. I love it — so far.

Ironically (given my current moist and cool status), the novel begins on “Black Sunday,” April 14, 1935, when a remarkable, horrifying and devastating dust storm enveloped the Great Plains.

For a quick 3-minute look at the almost incredible devastation of that day (please watch it — it’s … amazing and awful):

CLICK HERE

(From Ken Burns’ “The Dust Bowl,” broadcast on PBS)

I’ll never complain about being water-logged again.

Keep YOUR powder dry!

Love,

Amy