Early Spring And Then More Winter
By Margery McCurdy Plummer

I like animals, especially dogs and cats, since I have Miss Kitty, a twenty-one year old cat and Mr. Skippy, the two or three year old dog whose mission in life, it seems, is to keep us up and running.

I like flowers, too, all kinds and all colors. One day, a week or two ago, we went to Lowe’s or maybe Home Depot to shop around a bit, and I looked at the flowers.

The day we went was a day when everyone but the most seasoned of weather observers seemed to just know that the globe had warmed and would stay that way until the end of summer.

The place was over-run with people coming in and going out with pots and plats and buckets full of every imaginable kind of color of plant.

Maybe it was because of the really cool, dark days we had been having, but the colors of blooms were about two shades brighter than I remembered.

I knew that I was not going to load up on a bunch of plants now. I was window shopping. Experience has taught me that the plants I usually plant can wait until near the end of April or the first of May, but on this day a no wait mentality seemed to have prevailed among the shoppers.

I bought three cactus plants, small ones with desert brightening, flashy red and orange and even purple blossoms. People in this kind of fun, buying mood tend to be chatty, and as I waited in line to pay for my small purchase, I noticed an older man in front was holding a box of quite a few bright daisies, impatiens, begonias and other plants.

I casually remarked to him that sometimes I have to restrain myself from planting flowers too soon, then lose them to frost, which wasn’t exactly true.

He was very nice but let me know in no uncertain terms that he planned to keep his on his porch until it got warm enough to plant outside. I liked him immediately, because I’ve longed for a front porch and swing, and I could see him on his porch in a rocker or swing visiting with some old buddies waiting for the weather to get right before planting outside.

A woman agreed that it could be too soon to plant but “It’s been so warm,” she rationalized.

When I finally reached the check out counter holding my three plants encased in plastic, a nice young man behind me with no flowers but with a bag of fertilizer and some roach killer, smilingly asked if I though I could keep those bright blooms that bright at home. I told him that I thought I could.

“They remind me of my mother,” he said softly. “She always had some out in front of the house.” In retrospect, considering the differences in our ages, he possibly could have said, “You remind me of my mother.” Who cares? It was all about flowers.

As I was leaving, I saw an interesting sight. Right in front of me was a very old man with a beautiful tan dog, which could have been two feet high. It was on a leash, and in his arm the man carried another dog of the same color. It was much, smaller than the dog he had on a leash.

When you see dogs like that, you have to say something nice about them. I could tell that he expected it. He almost wanted to tell me too much about them, and as I was trying to move away, I saw him looking over my shoulder.

“Here comes my wife,” he said. As she approached, he tried to introduce us. If looks could have killed, I would have dropped dead. Without looking at me, the woman said angrily to him. “We have exactly three minutes to get there!” She took the smaller dog from him, walked hastily away in front of him. He and the big dog followed softly, and I could tell for sure who ran the show in that family. I felt a little sorry for him, but was glad he knew that I liked his dogs..

When Easter morning came with its overnight record breaking hard freeze and my little cactus plants stood colorfully on a window sill inside the warm house, I thought of all those people and their loads of colorful plants. If they froze, had they been replanted?