On spring

Oh, I'm gonna fry you up. I've got your eggs and bacon right here, baby!

Her voice was terse with another of the many threats she'd made today. I walked to the end of my house quietly and tilted my head around the corner so I could watch her unobserved.

Mama Rose is my friend's mother. She's 75-years old. With one hand gloved and the other bare, she was stooped over my bed of Irises, pulling at a weed while striking it with an evil looking machete.

Not my machete. She'd brought it from home. It's her favorite tool. When I could coax her to put it down, she'd help me pull weeds from the flower bed in front, replacing the weeds with cypress mulch. Unlike me, yard work was something she'd rather do than just about anything. At the end of our first day together, she left her machete and work shoes, so in her words, she'd have to come back for them tomorrow.

She called the next morning at 7:30. She'd been up since 6. Her daughter and I say she's crazy. It's the good crazy though, not Power-of-Attorney crazy.

She lends just the right spirit to spring yard work. I love spring and I'll tell you why. There's a crazy kind of risk in it.

When I started the working in the yard earlier in the week, I was going solo. It was warm outside and sunny. I burned fallen limbs, I cut grass and I pulled honeysuckle vines. When I came inside that night, I had a light sunburn. I invited Mama Rose over the next day because I felt behind the season already and knew I needed help.

The next day, the picture changed. The skies were overcast. A light drizzle coated my burn pile. But the weather was fine for listening to stories from my companion.

I say, don't tell me not to do something, just tell me why I shouldn't do it.

I played along. Don't do it because your mother told you not to and you'd get a whipping.

Shoo. A whipping only lasts a minute. Did I ever tell you how I started a fire with a match and a rock?

And the next day the picture had changed again. Tornadoes came through during the night, passing just south of us but still setting off the county warning sirens. I savored my coffee the next morning, waiting for the weather to clear. Finally, I drove through the fog to pick up Mama Rose again.

Look how many churches there are between your house and ours. Don't you know people just keep building all these churches to have more ways to make money off Our Lord? It's just disgusting.

When Mama Rose's New Orleans accent wraps around this word, I believe even those who don't understand English can get the meaning from her inflection.

DEEZ-GUS-TIN, baby.

Three days. Three kinds of weather. By Friday, I realized my yard work wasn't going to be finished by the end of my vacation. And I realized I wasn't behind the season at all.

I also realized that if I gave Mama Rose cuttings from my flower beds, she'd have something to plant at her house, and I'd get a day off.

There are plenty of lessons to take from spring. They repeat every year and every year they feel new because I've changed from this time last year.

First, I hear change is inevitable. People can pretend that change doesn't happen, but they are just denying the reality of spring, which comes each year with wind and sun and tantalizing activity. My yard is in bad shape because I ignored it two springs in a row. Ignoring it didn't stop spring's invitation from reaching me, nor did it stop weeds from overtaking my flowers. This week I tugged weeds out of my yard, revealing all the lovely flowers underneath. I could almost hear them beginning to breathe again.

Change is dirty. I can't pull weeds or dig soil without getting dirty. In fact, digging is best done when it's been raining, making the ground soft enough to release the weeds and soft enough to mess up my shoes. Participating in spring means making messes and cleaning them up. Not getting dirty means letting messes creep up unplanned but never quite unexpected. You can retreat from that, or you can get in the thick of things. It's okay to choose retreat sometimes. I've chosen it in the past. But the task isn't mysterious or insurmountable. Pull the weeds and toss them out. Leave the rest.

Spring also teaches me that the right tools can make a difference. Recently a friend did repairs for me and in the process put a slash in the finger of his pigskin gloves. We didn't throw them away and after he left I found them tucked away in a utility drawer. I'd never worn pigskin before, but I tried them this week, and I have to tell you, they are the most comfortable gloves I've ever worn. They saved me blisters from the rake and cuts from the thorn bushes. I'd have never justified the expense of fancy gloves for garden work if my friend hadn't left the pair. That's a good friend.

Which is another thing about spring, if only for this year's lesson. I learned that accepting help from friends enriches me in ways pride can't. It may go against my upbringing to ask for help cleaning up a mess I made through my own neglect, but none of my friends saw it that way, so I decided to stop seeing it that way myself. I discovered that I got a lot more done when I did. Mama Rose may not have done any heavy lifting in my yard this week, but she was so determined that she inspired all my heavy lifting. Meanwhile, instead of focusing on what hasn't been completed, being with her let me focus on our accomplishments. I enjoyed the yard through her eyes, like a parent appreciating their child's first snowfall.

When the rain finally moved us to pack up our tools for the day, we stood under the carport, reluctant to go inside. I brought the dogs in from the backyard to play at our feet.

This cold weather has got to go. Mother Nature will take care of it.

Not Jesus? I asked quietly, concentrating more on the rain and the streams of yellow pollen flowing down my driveway.

Sometimes he holds out too long. Mother Nature knows when enough is enough.

She sent the rain then, to tell us we're done for today.

Are you tired, darlin'? I could hear the smile in her voice.

Yes, I am. You whupped my butt, old woman. She took this as high praise.

We only have two hands, darlin'. If we did it all today, what would we do tomorrow?

I will get a call on Sunday. You can take that to the bank. My legs and low back are so stiff I have to sit funny as I write this. But I'm looking forward to the call.

The risk that comes with this yard work is that high winds would damage what we'd done. Or that frost would kill the new seedlings we'd put down in hopes of having vegetables this summer.

Or that personally I'd get tired of the effort, that something new would come to upset my applecart and distract me. Two years ago it had been my mother's bypass surgery and months of recovery. I didn't have any energy left for risky behavior those days.

But I like spring, and I'll tell you why. There's hope in it. And that's something I'm planting this year.

--Laura Burke