There is an old but tried saying that you can’t fight City Hall. I have found it indeed true. In fact, because I have been fighting a utility instead of city hall – but it is the same thing – I may be in jail by the time you read this.

“Take nine eggs, one-half pound of butter or a tea cup of olive oil, three cold cooked chickens or one medium-sized turkey, two or three bunches of celery .

It would seem that summer has settled in for the long haul. Already the locust blossoms that saturated the sunlit afternoons and the evening breezes with their heady perfume have withered away and the orange blossoms have scattered their petals like snowflakes.

She is Winnie. And she is Ori and Little Sister, and she is Pelly and Polly and Duchess, and she is Sally and Spotty, and she is Missy and Shamrock and Olivia, and she is Maggie and Barney and Brud.

They are together again, Ori and Little Sister. Never before has this house been utterly silent. Never before has this house been virtually empty except for Lisa who misses her friend almost as much as I do.

Mother Nature has pulled some not-so-nice tricks this spring and the one she came up with this past week convinced me that indeed the whole world, including some of its furry creatures, had gone mad.

Actually, it was Shakespeare who made the decision whether or not I would ride a borrowed horse on my 85th birthday.

Twenty years ago on April 4, I awakened to a white glare outside the bedroom window, realized the glare was from snow, laughed aloud, burrowed back beneath the covers, and snoozed for another 30 minutes.

If there is a whopping blizzard on the Thursday this article appears, it is all my fault, because this Thursday (March 22) I unplugged the heat tape in the barn.

March is certainly being March, at least in my area, where there is great bluster with huffing and puffing and white-outs one minute, benign sunshine the next.