The Lovely Season

Most places call it spring, but here in GroveAtopia it is the Lovely Season.  And as lovely as the Lovely Season is, it is also the season of weeds and wasps. 

You knew they were out there, but because the weather was lousy you could pretend they weren't.  But today was just so beautiful you had to face them.  

You had to go outside.

It's a love/hate thing, isn't it?  Gosh it's beautiful.   So bright and clear.  Warm and sunny.  And made all the more so because GroveAtopians wait so long and patiently for the Lovely Season to arrive.  

And it is so lovely we don't want to tell anyone else about it. It's GroveAtopia's secret.   Everyone else thinks it's raining.

But we know otherwise and we must go outside.  But when we do, we must also contend with what's been going on during the other season when we stay inside.  Weeds have been growing and wasps have been waiting.

We in GroveAtopia must make our peace with both.   We must learn to live with them because even if we wanted to, we could not rid ourselves of them completely.  

And really we must tip our hats to them.  The wasps especially.   They blindly bang their heads against every surface they encounter, each one looking for its own perfect place to start those papery honeycomb nests that hang from every eave and lurk in every dark place they choose.

See the picture?  That's GroveAtopia's wheelbarrow handle.  See that hole in the middle?  While outside doing the work the Lovely Season demands, GroveAtopia saw a wasp land on the hole's edge, poke around a bit and walk right inside and I didn't see him come out.   

I silently prayed the wasp did come out and I had missed it because, while the wasp might think the inside of a wheelbarrow handle is an excellent place to build a nest, GroveAtopia does not.  I will forget, and one day, thinking of something else entirely, grab that handle and one of them will sting me.

Still you have to admire the force with which they and all the creatures of the Lovely Season go about their business, completely without giving consideration to how it will affect the rest of us.  

Wasps, weeds and everything else.  We take it all during the Lovely Season.  And tell no one it isn't raining.