The pre- season.

June.

Still raining in the Northwest fifty percent of the time. Yet, we can't wait for sun anymore. We venture  outdoors with few layers, walking the beaches, digging and weeding in the garden, removing debris, cleaning gutters. We get soaked and muddied too often, grumbling that the sun is not keeping its appointment. Nobody seems to keep an appointment in this weather.

Roads have to be repaired before the crowds arrive. Flaggers and workmen slow down our routines of getting to town, stopping at the pharmacy, checking the newly opened farmers' markets with berries and lavender. Cherries appear from the interior lands, and asparagus, and plenty of arugula and kale. By now, in California, they are eating tomatoes, I whisper to no-one in particular. By now, my peas should have germinated!

This is our pre-season, pre- tourist, pre-family reunion, pre-celebration season. We are still paring down the accumulations of winter, clearing piles of papers and clothes, burning bonfires of dead wood, branches. We reset our gravel on the packed dirt, pull vines of invasive ivy and blackberry, and wonder how we can stand or move our arms after just an hour. Our aching bodies are tired quickly.

June will continually disappoint; yet, we hope and plan as though the few days of sunshine are harbingers of many more. Graduation parties will be rained out; weddings will be washed out, and even on dry days, the temperatures will still be cold for many seeds to germinate on their own; too wet for most feet to trample on the ground.

June is bread dough on the counter. It needs warmth, and time to get to the right size for baking as we watch and anticipate and salivate.