Spring Is Here in the Hamptons! (Can You Feel it?)

To celebrate the first day of spring I walked across Southampton—the village, not the town. It was rather nippy and a bit windy, but glorious—at least on the way out. On the way back I was pretty sure that the two fingers and thumb on my left hand that clutched my container of hummus for lunch were frozen so solidly that they would have to be amputated. Eventually, like the great glaciers of yore, they thawed.

Southampton Village’s law prohibiting single-use plastic shopping bags has made me stronger. They refuse to allow shops to provide those bags that almost instantly become garbage, and I refuse to ever purchase the fugly re-useable bags for sale in the stores. I stuff my purchases in my coat pockets, balance stacks of groceries in my arms and, when parked nearby, carry the occasional bag of frozen fruit between my teeth. It’s making me a better person. I really feel that I’m coming closer and closer to remembering to grab a tasteful tote bag from my car before I head into a store. Someday.

Perhaps this general determination on my part fueled my desire to take a long walk on a “spring day” that was followed by two days of snow. Or, possibly, a touch of cabin fever had set in.

Did you have this conversation last month?

“You need a haircut.”

“Yeah.”

“Get one.”

“Okay.”

Is this the most stimulating conversation had in your house last week?

“You need a haircut.”

“Yeah.”

“Get one.”

“Okay.”

Yes, it was looking like a long, cold winter around Chez Dermont when my husband made the most outrageous suggestion—that we watch the new film Hyde Park on Hudson, about FDR, BEFORE we see Lincoln. What a wildman he is! If I could just get him to pee on the compost pile like a good farmer, all would be well.

Of course it probably helped his mood that he was heading off to Florida for a few days while I’m left here freezing my fingers and charged with filling the raised beds in the garden.

But I’ve smelled spring twice now—on the breeze. Mostly it’s still just bits of fallen leaves and essence of road salt in the air but Mother Nature is about to get a new dress.

Soon my mother will overnight me some ramps from upstate, followed by wild asparagus and dark maple syrup followed by local rhubarb and lettuce and, well, you know the rest—107 days until LOCAL TOMATOES.