Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

We filed our taxes on time, and turned out to owe Massachusetts enough that they assessed a penalty for not having made estimated tax payments. So, a first quarter estimated payment for 2017 also went out on the 18th. (Just Massachusetts; we're fine on the federal income tax.)

I'm working on a small proofreading job right now, and also just filled out some forms for a previous client, whose employer wants a W-9 and evidence that I am a freelancer rather than an employee. That evidence is me saying that I set my own hours, don't work on campus, and such, plus a list of other clients. (I'm not going to try to list all my past clients, back to whenever, so the attached sheet of paper says "Current and recent clients include" and has some names.) I was annoyed when the request came in, in part because I'd thought I was done with that project; my client sent the payment almost immediately after I finished copyediting his book.)

Spring is moving pretty quickly, with lots of violets and rhododendron right now; I saw an amusing cluster of daffodils near Mount Auburn Street today (and may post a photo separately). One of the lettuces I planted last week was pulled out and left on the ground; I don't know whether to blame rabbits, squirrels, or unspecified other mammals. I hope some of the lettuce seeds I started will be ready to plant moderately soon.

On the activism front, I was pleased to see that the state prosecutors (Attorney General Healey and the county DAs*) are setting aside almost all of the convictions tainted by fraudulent lab results. This is something I was making phone calls about in February and March, as well as something the ACLU sued over. A lot of those people are already out of prison, but having a felony conviction on record is still hurting them. Having done very little political/activist in the last few weeks, I am now trying to decide which of two protests to go to in Boston on Saturday this weekend. The March for Science sounds like more fun, but the emergency anti-deportation rally outside ICE headquarters likely needs me more. ETA: The anti-ICE protest has been moved to Sunday at 3 p.m., which means I could do both, energy allowing.

42itous's daughter wants to come back and play with our cats again; I told her I like the idea, but we need to figure out when will work.

After what seems like a very slow start, the forsythia bushes in our neighborhood now have lots of flowers open. (It has been sunny for the last several days, and very warm yesterday and today—I think today's high was something like 81F/27C, and tomorrow is forecast to be even warmer.) This feels late to me, but I'm not sure whether this is just not being used to living in Massachusetts, or that it feels vaguely out of order, in that the daffodils in front of the house have been blooming for a couple of weeks.

The nearby garden center now has six-packs of lettuce plants, and some potted herbs. I bought some potting soil today, to use with the seeds I started a few days ago, while trying not to worry about the likelihood that I should have started my seeds sooner than I did. (The seeds are currently in little disks of peat moss, just starting to sprout, and I am going to need to move at least the tomatoes into slightly larger pots before planting them outside.)

We also have enthusiastic cardinals singing in trees nearby; last summer we had at least one fine brood of cardinal fledglings darting across the yard.

We've just had a few unseasonably warm days (high of 74F/23C yesterday, 70F/21C today) with quite a bit of sunshine. cattitude went out to buy coffee and booze while I was taking some things over to adrian_turtle, and getting some grapefruit from her in return. While I was on the bus, he texted me a photo of some small white flowers, and then of crocuses. So of course after I got back from the grocery store, we headed out again so he could show them to me.

In addition to the crocuses (both purple and yellow) and snowdrops he had seen on his first walk, we saw periwinkles (Vinca, not the animals), tiny white flowers we didn't recognize, and tiny yellow flowers that looked a little like pineapple grass.

The weather is expected to cool off tomorrow, but I suspect that the crocuses, snowdrops, and periwinkles will be fine; the first two are early-spring perennials, and periwinkle is pretty hardy.

Also, we have both walked too much; before Cattitude sent me photos of flowers, my plan was to come home from the grocery store and stay put, rather than do any more stairs today.

So far today, I have had fresh blueberries, cherries, and raspberries. The raspberries are local (via the farmers' market in Arlington Center), the blueberries are from New Jersey, and the cherries are from the Pacific Northwest. [I grumble about Washington apples, but Washington cherries are excellent.]

cattitude also got strawberries, fresh lettuce, a cucumber, and peas from the farmers' market.

Meanwhile, one of my cucumber plants is flowering, and I nudged 42itous's pea vine aside to give it more room. (For plants that were expected to be eaten by the local rabbits, those peas are doing very well indeed.)

So, I don't know what if any of this is anomalous. Yes, Seattle just set a record for most rain during September (dataset goes to 1945, there is no official weather station in Bellevue), in what struck me as a wet but not exceptional month.

What's catching my attention is that autumn seems both late and very drawn out. Most of the trees are still green, though there are some gorgeous trees covered entirely in bright red leaves a couple of blocks south, which I was looking at while I exercised today), but I started seeing bits of yellow and orange on healthy trees in mid-August. Trees which still have those leaves, this isn't like the old sugar maple in Inwood Hill Park that always turned color early and dropped its leaves early.

I had fresh local nectarine in my yogurt yesterday morning, and fresh local raspberries this morning. Yes, the vendor at the farmers' market told me this was the last week for berries, but another farmer (not there this past Saturday) had told me the same two weeks earlier. We were also told that there would probably be no nectarines next week, but plums are likely into November.

Someone told me back in August that this was the best summer in several years, in terms of fruit and vegetables. He was talking about how much fruit and how good it was; is it usual for there to be nectarines and berries through much if not all of September?

Meanwhile, rhododendrons are flowering. Not one random blossom: this went from a single branch I saw on one bush, and a few separated blossoms on another, to a small bushes that are behaving entirely as if it's spring, with bright flowers on all or most of their branches: bright purple on 102nd Avenue near the QFC, and two bushes with white flowers on NE 6th Street near the Westin. I also saw a couple of anomalous yellow irises (one plant, next to that first rhododendron branch last week). The periwinkles go merrily along, a blossom here and a few there; back in New York and Boston, those are spring flowers, and the occasional patch with a few blossoms left is a June thing, not a September one. cattitude and I keep stopping and looking at periwinkle patches, no longer surprised, but just because we like periwinkles.

[Yes, this is a small thing, but I'll want to remember it, and I don't think I have anything useful to add about the Republicans trying to hold us all for ransom via the government shutdown.]

There is one marigold in bloom in the churchyard at Broadway and Isham Streets. What's noteworthy is that this isn't the last of a batch that were transplanted into the garden months ago: it's a single volunteer plant. I've been watching the closed bud for the past couple of weeks, and a few days ago had concluded that it wasn't going to flower. (It's been chilly lately, and we've seen frost on the lawn across the street.)

This morning, we were walking back from the drugstore and saw it. One small flower, a few inches above the ground, and facing sideways rather than turned up toward the sun. I'm guessing it opened a day or two ago.

As my mother predicted (in email), Amtrak is not going from Boston to New York tomorrow. Ever-hopeful, I have booked a ticket for Thursday afternoon, and in the meantime am up here in Arlington with adrian_turtle. We are eating chocolate chip–oatmeal–cranberry cookies, still warm from the oven.

I went with Adrian this morning to her eye doctor, as general moral support; he seemed congenial enough that, on the way out, I observed that if I lived in the area, I would be making an appointment myself. (Dr. Nosike, at Mount Auburn.) We took the bus down to Harvard, then walked to and from the doctor, and over to Central Square to buy chocolate chips. It was a gorgeous couple of hours, sunny and warm, and still looking like fall, with colored leaves on the trees as well as on the ground. (I saw some branches down, and even one small tree that had landed on someone's fence along Mass Ave. And a remarkable number of flowers, including three rhododendron bushes that looked like April.)

I checked the Amtrak web site every hour or so; around 7:30 they posted that there would be no service between Boston and Newark tomorrow. I am not counting on Thursday either, but I have absolutely nothing to lose by booking a ticket. (If that's canceled, I may look into bus service for Friday, or just book again on Amtrak.) It's not a bad time to be out of New York City, but I miss cattitude (and julian_tiger).

*Adrian says "Commonwealth of the hobbit."

cattitude and I just went for a stroll in Inwood Hill Park, to look at birds and plants, hoping it would be cooler than our living room (it was). We saw two night herons (asleep on separate branches), a mud-covered turtle, peeps, and the usual geese and gulls (and mourning doves and egrets and ducks and other summer or year-round birds). Mallow season is just about over, and the jimson weed growing in the marsh seems to be done flowering (there's a much larger one near Isham Street that may not be).

On our way back, I saw someone selling corn on the cob: on a stick, with butter and cheese (I think queso blanco). I bought one, and hung out next to the stone wall near the park entrance eating it. It was good: sweet and juicy. (I gave Cattitude a couple of bites; he turned done the offer of more.) Sign of the times, maybe: the vendor was wearing latex gloves, and not because she was worried about a Health Department inspection; this is small-scale unlicensed vending, transporting the corn in an insulated cooler* in a shopping cart.

Yes, almost everything is blooming early this year. ("Almost" because some things, such as Norway maples and dogwood, seem to be driven mostly by day length.)

I've spent a lot of time looking at something and saying "Lilacs?!" or "roses?" or the like. But I suspect it will all seem a bit less weird when the last of the forsythia stops blooming.

( phenology, cut because not everyone is interested in these details )

It feels as though most of what I've done lately is walk around and enjoy the anomalous spring. The forecasts are that it will go back to, say, April weather soon instead of trying to be May, but I've seen rumors that we'll have local strawberries at the Greenmarket by the end of April. But today I went to the gym, and wandered around Central Park for an hour and a half. Cherries get all the publicity, but Central Park is full of flowering apple trees right now. (Also everything from winter aconite to rhododendrons covered in magenta blooms.) Yesterday I saw some violets in bloom in Inwood Hill Park and took a few photos just for the date-stamp; today I got photos of many more violets and other flowers. I hope to post some over the weekend; all I've done so far is the first pass of deleting those that were out of focus, and a few that, while nothing was wrong with them, nothing was right either. (Also, I took a few pictures of two tourists in front of a rhododendron today, with their camera, and yesterday I identified a drooping cherry for someone.)

Non-botanical signs of spring include ice cream trucks, cabbage white butterflies, and the water fountains in the parks having been turned on.

At some point I may start talking about news and politics and other aspects of the wider world, but it's often easier to comment on other people's blogs and journal entries than to write my own.

( some gym numbers )