It starts with sunshine and spring dresses. And it builds.
Your toes come to room temperature. Your skin slurps up the Vitamin D from above as though it’s spent its life drinking salt. You plant seeds and watch them bloom. There’s a bounce in your step as clenched muscles relax and you reach toward the source of the heat.
But then it builds. The air starts to push down on you.Your hair sticks to your face. You move more slowly, pushing your legs reluctantly into the air one after another.
And you wait — you wait for it to grow to the point where it just has to break, where it can’t grow anymore.
It comes with sideways rain, gusts of wind and pounding thunder.
Sometimes there’s hail. Usually there are lost tomato plants, and shock, as though this doesn’t happen every year.
I rolled back my gardening sheet after a long winter three weeks ago. It was 25˚C and it looked as though it would stay that way until after the May 24th (planting) weekend. Would there really be no risk of frost between then and now?
My sorrel had made it through unscathed. And my echinacea was flowering for the first time. The mint and aloe in my self-watering containers, which had been dormant but alive all winter, started growing again.
I harvested lemony greens and planted lavenders, bergamot and horseradish seedlings. I dunked black currants and elderberry plants into composted soil. I scattered rapini and arugula seeds and folded fertilizer into tomato beds.
And then I felt it building. The humidity came. I couldn’t sleep at night. I stayed away from turning on the oven and making long-simmered chicken broths. I biked instead of walking, so I’d at least get a breeze.
My eyes were tired, weighed down with damp air. My body wanted to sit and stay.
And then, as I was coming home one day, it finally broke. Great gusts and booms and shattering lightening. I covered my plants and hoped the hail wouldn’t destroy my pea sprouts.
And then, as quickly as it came, it was over. The only injury was my aloe, which I transferred into a smaller pot and fed nutrients, the equivalent of chicken soup for plants. We all made it.
But now it’s building again. I want to plant my arctic kiwi, but I don’t think the seedling could take the hit. I want to hammer down my bean and pea trellises, but I’m preoccupied with breathing in the sweltering heat. 38˚C with humidity.
And this time when it breaks, and the hail comes, it won’t build again right away. It’ll be cold. Too cold for aloe. Too cold for tender peas. Too cold for tomatoes and peppers. My sorrel will make it, though, because sorrel always makes it.
I’ll cover the garden in my gardening sheet and myself in a blanket and nestle into apartment for a few more days, to give the air time to warm up again. It still hasn’t quite decided what to make of spring.
Neither has my aloe. But it’s learning. And, inevitably, the heat will build again.
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