Merciless March

…in March I will be rested, caught up and human…” Sylvia Plath, in a letter to her mother, Aurelia, February 1953.

The best laid plans and all that. It’s been a merciless march in so many ways.

As is my habit, Equinox sunrise found me at double bladed paddle church service at Lake Caballo with a kayak. Of course. It was a long portage over ankle twisting rocks to find the water.

Water which was in a lumpy, bumpy, grey green sullen mood, a belly starved of snow melt by the drought, slapping grumpily into the shoreline under yet another cloudless sky. With gulls.

Temperatures rose to almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Centigrade) on the vernal equinox in my back garden. It’s been a week of extreme heat, and no relief for days, now. Merciless summer level heat in this merciless March springtime. Forget the lion and lamb, this is another beast entirely. The most unbalanced equinox ever.

I’m back to working in the garden in the cool of dawn then retreating inside into stone and adobe interior spaces for the heat of the day. Doing midsummer things in spring as the garden, with masses of expensive supplemental water, that most precious and finite element in this equation, evolves into a brief oasis.

Everything is in a hurry, suddenly. The apricot hardly blossomed, went straight to leaf (as an aside, maybe it didn’t get enough chill hours this winter past having behaved so unwinterly) while figs explode, going from barely there to neon green flare in less than 24 hours.

Colour everywhere, a flaming flash, burning bright like stars going nova. The seasons have forgotten their norms, are putting on one another’s clothing. “But daylight hours…” I bleat into the void. “Be still and look at me” says Cistus purpureus.

Project Food Garden, 2026 edition, which had me planning a series of plantings staggered throughout the months, is in danger of being blown off course by this sudden heat. I’m not ready. Not rested. Not finished winter infrastructure projects.

The fields of sugar snap peas were meant to rise into resplendence in mild spring days 25-30 degrees cooler than we are currently experiencing.

I manage to spend some blissful timeless time, through another recent sunrise building lightweight trellises from old prunings. It’s the least I can do for the snap peas, having brought these tender young things to life in this hellish heat. Poor temperate babies, I didn’t know quite how harsh this March was going to turn out.

Questing tendrils respond with immediacy, twining in gratitude for support.

In the front, cereal rye glows greenly while garlic gets a deep mulching of old horse manure to see it through the next six weeks or so until harvest. Fragrant volunteer petunias perfume my tasks here beneath the gaze of Turtleback mountain.

Later, having retreated to cool indoor spaces, I look up to see a coo of Inca doves sunbathing on the kitchen window birdbath, tails in the water. This is why I can’t have nice clean birdbaths, why the water is always murky. They poop and dream and dream and poop.

It’s a dove’s life.

It does to distract from the sometime surround sound inhumanity of this merciless, cruel time.

Recommended Reading:

Exit Wounds : a story of Love, Loss and Occasional Wars. Peter Godwin, 2024. An exquisitely written, thoughtful and questioning memoir by award winning journalist and author Peter Godwin, whose life has spanned continents, wars and devastated and devastating relationships. Here he hangs the narrative on his relationships with three women (mother, sister, wife), but to me the book proved far more relevant for its examination of identity, immigration, exile and an interogation of notions of family, home and homecoming . I could read it at least three times: once for the story, once the ideas and a third for the texture of language, vocabulary and turn of phrase.

Deep gratitude to the family members who stopped by, pruned my mesquite tree with a a samurai sword, and left this swallow bedecked hardcover treasure on my table. Giving up Death Valley superbloom roadtrip was worth it!