Two things I like about spring

I love big fat juicy artichokes, the kind with pointy leaves that prick your fingers when you pull them off, and a little bowl of real butter with a big shot of fresh lemon juice.

Then the choke, I love the choke. I have to fight myself to keep my hands off my husband’s. He eats too slowly.

Spring artichokes were my mom’s favorite. I don’t know how she found them in a Denver grocery store in the fifties. But she’d get them and one April afternoon we’d sit at the long tin-topped kitchen table and work our way down to that choke, that magic moment when we cut off the dangerous fuzz, “don’t let it get caught in your throat!” and scrape up the last of the butter.

The second thing I’m afraid I might like is the continuous battle with dog hair. Our lab sheds her yellow white coat like dandelion fluff. She plonks down in the car seat and the air is filled with floaters.

I should keep her out of the car but we’re joined at the hip.

Now she’s had a bath and her under coat in coming off in handfuls. The carpets are white with dog hair that needs to be vacuumed constantly.

I wonder if I keep brushing her it would come off infinitely.

I think she knows she’s embarrassing herself. It feels like something we’re doing together. Better than my failed attempts at Frisbee and our sporadic walks, this is us against nature.

I hate it, except it’s part of a ritual that ends with budding leaves and soft breezes. I throw the hair into the wind for the birds’ nests.