Spring is so unpredictable. On Sunday morning I fishtailed on the road in the sleet and snow. Then on Monday it was in the upper 40s and everyone was cheerful all over town.

Last week I mentioned that children were attempting sled riding at the Tashmoo Overlook. For, I believe, the first time ever my editor corrected me and typed in sledding. My friend Marie and I had a conversation about various expressions and their region of origin. We always went sled riding in Rew, Pa. but she simply went sledding in Boston.

I grew up drinking pop, while here on the East Coast teenagers enjoyed soda. She was pregnant with a child while I was pregnant for one. I called slumber parties “spend overs” as opposed to “sleep overs.”

My all time favorite is my Indiana-born friend Sharlee’s expression: If something is crooked it is referred to as “walker jawed.”

I wandered around the yard on Monday afternoon just to see what, if anything, was happening. I happily found a dark pink helleborous in bloom as well as emerging oriental poppies and hollyhocks. I hope I will learn to love my weeds as I age. They are nothing if not remarkably hardy. There are buttercups and purple dead nettle everywhere. The good news is that they do attract honey bees.

Many of the seed packages say that planting can commence when the ground can be worked. Yikes, it has happened folks. We never did have a significant stretch of freezing weather to create our version of permafrost this winter.

In the fall I noticed many tiny Red Russian kale seedlings in a path. I moved some into the hoophouse and have been harvesting them all winters. The rest died or disappeared. At any rate I noticed new growth on several. What an impressive plant. Sharlee visited Margaret Knight over on Chappy. She has a glass attached greenhouse that is not heated. She showed Sharlee some kale plants in there which are 10 years old and still producing. Wow! I love that.

I’m still transplanting tiny onion seedlngs. I am a nut case. I cannot bear any of their little lives to be in vain. Let me digress, briefly, and quote Julia Child: “It’s hard to imagine a great civilization without onions.”

In my daily travels I try to notice at least one thing of interest. There is a house on the left just as you turn off the Edgartown/Vineyard Haven Road onto Skiff. It has a basement greenhouse. There are quite a few very large geraniums pressed up against the window. They are in full and glorious bloom. I’m a big fan of bringing geraniums indoors for the winter. Mine are about to bloom. I did cut them back mercilessly in the fall so I guess they may have bloomed sooner if I had left them on their own.

I usually watch several news shows at night. I try to hit the sofa by seven or eight. Why, oh why, do we have to see so many drug commercials? They are all for prescription drugs and give side effects including death. Half of the ailments are rare for my family and friends, thank goodness.

Doesn’t the big Pharma conglomerate have enough business? It seems that everyone is taking some sort of drug. I do not remember my parents and/or grandparents taking all sorts of medications, with the possible exception of aspirin.

Since I am on the subject of television advertising I may as well keep going. I swear, you cannot make this up. There have been several notifications on the weed killer Roundup. Law offices are offering to represent you in a suit if you developed cancer from exposure to the product. Then, in the same time slot, a man dressed as a cowboy was shooting and killing weeds in his driveway with — you guessed it, Roundup.