Just maybe Spring is arriving.

To wit: a sudden urge, after painting another wall of the studio and moving all the furniture ready to do the next wall tomorrow, then a long walk in a newly opened park with a walking trail, just to explore, then home to riddle out the condensation outlet pipe for the air conditioning system.  One of those days where you wonder where the energy came from.

The last, mysterious riddling rite, is a spring thing that you have to do to make sure that the pipe which for reasons best known to themselves and their yacht builders, the home builders installed several inches below ground, where was I, oh yes, and which is what gets the condensation in the summer outside and not pouring through your living room ceiling,  anyway, that pipe, needs to be relieved of its winter's buildup of leaves and debris.  

This means finding it, and digging enough around it and removing debris so that the condensation won't just try to travel right back along the pipe again, and then back up eventually into the pipe above the living room ceiling, given that gravity is being defied by their design. Neighbors have found this out the hard way, when they've sat in that nice sunny corner and found they were getting a surprise shower. Of water and of ceiling bits.

And it's vital to do the cleanup, but only when the season changes does the urge come over me to
   
1. find the *(*(* thing,now buried partly by wind and weather and partly by the *(*(* landscapers blowing leaves and debris onto the patio as fast as I can sweep it off, and straight into the pipe.
 
2. find the little weed cutting thing that works a treat to pull out debris and you always hope not small dead animals  

3. move all the items that got put on top of that area in the course of moving containers about in the fall, and then 
  
4. actually get down, find the pipe, dig around it and then clean it.  Working several inches below ground level is not advisable for your back, but it's only once a year.

But today there was an instant springtime reward for this virtuous labor -- a couple of the pots in the way of the digging had new green growth.  I tasted, I swooned.  Chives, sharp as only the first spring ones are, now some of them snipped and ready to eat this evening.

Like this:  snipping of chives 

over helping of homemade soft cheese (dead easy, boil milk, sour it with lemon, collect the curds, drain in cheesecloth, put in bowl, save whey in freezer for soup) 

and this is the stuffing for a nice baked potato for dinner.  

Along with a glass of merlot.followed by a strong cup of Vietnamese coffee, current craze, and more viewing of Vicious this evening.  I hope they get cracking and make more seasons of it. These guys are getting up there, seize the day, fellers.