We've had April showers aplenty this week as one storm after another rolled through and dumped heavy rain in torrents. The garden is thoroughly soaked with water, the plants a lush green from the bounty of rain and compost.

I've harvested quite a bit of spinach and the rest grows back to replace it with vigor. I've also been pulling quite a few weeds, including a hearty crop of wild violets. If there was such a thing as a macho violet, I have them growing among many of my veggies. I've never seen violets this big before.

The violets are supposed to be naturalized in the lawn, blooming with violet or blue and white flowers in the spring. They make their show about the same time as some grape hyacinths which escaped the flower beds and spread through about a quarter of the lawn near where their profligate ancestors were first planted. It is a lovely show if the lawn is mowed about a week before the buds rise above the crowns of leaves, as it cannot be mowed after that until the plants have set their seeds to start a new generation to bloom the next spring.

At present the violets are having a late flush of blooms, their crowns protected from the mower by the heavy rain soaking the garden. A number of other flowering weeds are also taking advantage of the respite to lift bold flags of blooms above the tall grass, promising a good crop of descendants to spread through the lawn. The back yard looks like a meadow this time of year, whereas the front lawn which gets mowed for the sake of convention is fairly tame and almost free of these wildflowers.

We are fairly well past the frosts of early spring, the temperatures rising high enough to call for some air conditioning in the house to control the muggy dampness. The relay of planting dates has largely passed to the warm weather crops, with okra, beans, squash and melons now planted in the garden. Their new sprouts started coming up just about the same time as the broccoli started making flower heads despite the diligence of the cabbage worms.

The brave bulb warriors of early spring have finished their bloom and are back in regulation green, gathering strength to make new buds carefully hidden below ground for next year. The snowball bush is blooming now, marking the transition to the time of the early summer bloomers. The azaleas are in full bloom as well, painting the front yard with huge splashes of white, pink, rose, and coral. The roses are just opening buds and making a few more promises of more flowers in the coming weeks.

The pear trees didn't bloom this year, not unexpected given their struggle for life last year. A treatment by a yardman who apparently didn't know as much as he said he did nearly killed their roots, requiring a heavy pruning of dying branches and pampering for the rest of the year after the damage became apparent. We lost that crop and there will be no crop this year, but at least the remaining limbs have leafed out well and it looks like the trees will survive the mishap. We did have the comfort of a good bloom from the apple and crabapple trees in the front yard despite the storm damage of last year.

The crepe myrtlettes have leafed out well, a considerable relief each year considering how they wait until one is afraid that they must have died of frost during the winter, and are preparing to take center stage with their ongoing bloom until frosty weather finally sends them back into their suspenseful winter sleep. Their fluffy pink and lavender spikes will be joined with white, pink, and lavender althea flowers and purple butterfly bush lances as well.

The only suspense in the crafting is whether that set of knitted blocks will become a vest or an afghan. I keep teetering between the two, daring madness with ideas of embellishing the pieces with buttons and beads and wondering if a sentence to a nursing home for wearing it would be worth it. I've almost got enough blocks to assemble a vest, but its bulk would not particularly flatter my figure. Such decisions become more difficult to make in the spring when the weather is warm enough that one cannot excuse any fashion excesses of this kind on the weather.