"Sumer Is Icumen In"

We didn't have much of a winter this year, and unless Mother Nature sends us a nasty late freeze (knocking on my skull...), the warm season is upon us here.  Time to prepare a new spot for tomato-growing, and remove the leaf-mulch from the sunchoke bed.  It's a pleasure living in the mid Mississippi valley as i do now; the Salt Lake valley was good too, but when i lived in the southern plain states i used to dread "sumer icumen in" -- too friggin' hot.

It'll be easier to do the before-breakfast walking that Donaldson recommends as an important part of his "Strong Medicine" when it's not so doggone chilly.  Got to buy some more REAL charcoal to cook steaks over, too -- they're just not the same done over a gas flame.  The grill and the crockpot will probably do most of the cooking for six or seven months now.

Everybody seems to get a charge out of springtime, but it was a college English teacher who made an impression on me by discussing the song entitling today's blog.  I'd learned it in an elementary-school music class (modernized lyrics), but had no idea what it was about till he described a medieval British winter for the working classes.  A fire-heated hovel without glass windows would be dark and smokey, and who could afford candles -- a tallow dip or betty lamp would be the best one could do.  Getting out and about was a cold and dirty business with paving a rarity.  As food stores slowly got used up, the monotony and limited nutrients probably got pretty tedious and energy-sapping.

Then, one glorious day, the sun came out and roads dried up, green shoots started poking through the ground, one's chilblains healed, and "a young man's fancy lightly turns"....  Singing about it seems highly appropriate.