Poor Biff’s Almanac: Saturday Edition

[Picture Not Available]

It is 7:42 a.m. on a Saturday.  All is quiet.  I am the first one to awake, though I have overslept as if I were a man of leisure.  Due to an apparent mix-up at the hospital at my birth, I am definitely not a man of leisure.

I am sitting at the little table in the kitchen area, staring out the bay window at the wasteland that is the back yard.  Crows are cawing somewhere nearby.  They travel in gangs throughout the neighborhood, being obstreperous and harassing the more law-abiding birds such as mockingbirds, blue jays, and grackles (though I have my doubts regarding the behavior of grackles).

Outside, everything is still mostly brown:  the cedar fence, the leaves from last autumn (yes, yes … I know!  I need to rake them up!  Sheesh!  I don’t need to be lectured.), the bare tree skeletons, the dead-but hopefully-just-hibernating grass, and the patches of dirt where dogs (now deceased) wore the grass away down to the clay, leaving places where nothing will grow, not even dandelions.

And yet, there are signs of spring.  Our recent spate of springlike (and early summer-like temperatures) have made some of the plants begin to show hope and greenery.  However, I could tell them (since I am old and grizzled and wise, having suffered through 30+ years of Dallas weather), that their hope and optimism are misplaced and ill-advised.  Sure, it may be 84 degrees (29 C) today, but someday soon, when we least expect it, Mother Nature will cackle maniacally (not unlike a crow) and suddenly send a Blue Norther through town, plunging temperatures down into the teens (-10 C).  Where will your misplaced optimism leave you then, you leafing rose bush?  You budding mulberry tree?  You greening crepe myrtle?  (You dandelions are of no concern to me … you deserve what you get for being a blight on mankind.)

I apologize for talking so much about the weather in these blogs of mine.  There isn’t much else to talk about here in Dallas.  Dallas is the largest small town in the world.  To be so huge, there is surprisingly little to do here.  So we talk about the weather.