One of the benefits of the very, very mild winter just past is that outdoor chores that would be still hanging over my head are more or less done.

    A couple of weekends ago, in fact, I pruned the grapes and brambles around the edge of the property and cut back branches along the driveway. This was well before the ticks were again afoot and the poison ivy had begun to grow.

    Since then, the garden beds have been turned and the compost spread, though nothing has been planted in them yet, pending better deer fencing and the time to install it. I had designs on a stand of bamboo at a friend’s house, good for cutting and building a lattice-work barrier, but a divorce and a quick sale of the property put an end to my plans. It can wait.

    With the must-do list shortened, I was able to turn to something I’ve really been meaning to do. On Sunday I drove to East Moriches on the chance that the Henry Leuthardt Nursery had a few apple trees left. It did, and I spent an enjoyable hour talking to John Leuthardt about business and how times change, as rain and a cold wind tapped at his barn roof.

    Mr. Leuthardt did indeed have a couple of trees for me. I bought six bare-root, dwarf saplings, three for our property and three for my mother’s. It is difficult to say how my three will do at our place down by the beach. I am willing to experiment. Our tiny raised garden beds do well by tomatoes, leeks, and lettuces; carrots, for one, do not grow at all. We will know in a year or two whether apples will thrive protected in the lee of our house.

    Already, I see trouble in the form of nearby cedar trees showing signs of an orange fungus that may be apple rust. This appeared before I brought my saplings home. Mr. Leuthardt suggested I try two disease-resistant varieties, the patriotic-named Freedom and Liberty, as well as the iron-skinned Roxbury russet.

    I planted my mother’s trees at her place in the village on Sunday afternoon. One went in the rear dooryard and will eventually replace an apple of unknown variety that was planted long ago and shows the signs of age.

    I did not get around to putting mine in the ground until after work on Monday. Then, the following morning, I dug up the russet and moved it to another location, one that should allow it more room to spread.

    We’ll see how it goes.

    When Georgie wrote on her twin sister’s wedding poster last weekend that “a life without love is a life half-lived,” I asked who had said that, figuring the reply would be Ovid, or Dante, or Calvin Coolidge, but her smiling answer was that the quote had come from the movie “Strictly Ballroom.”

    That put me on the spot, for when it came to us Mary had demurred, assuming that I, being “a writer,” would know just the right words that ought to be inscribed to the young couple on our behalf — wise, pithy, unforgettable.

    Panicking, I, who have lately been likening myself in lighthearted conversations with my wife to Keats’s “immortal bird,” lurched like a beheaded chicken in the general direction of a computer in the well-padded office with a pen and some crumbled paper in hand to summon up on Google “Ode to a Nightingale.”

    Now, you know, this ode is not entirely about untrammeled ecstasy — the poet at one point, in the bower, finds himself “half in love with easeful Death,” and at another observes that merely to be conscious is “to be full of sorrow.” But I was on a mission — a wedding is not a time for such temporizing — and Keats’s nightingale is indeed joyous, singing of summer “in full-throated ease.”

    Full-throated ease. I would use that.

    “. . . It is with full-throated ease that Mary and I. . . .” But what could follow the immortal bird? Ah, the Immortal Bard!

    Before you could say the Earl of Southampton, I had brought up on the screen Sonnet 18, which begins with the poet asking whether he should compare the Young Man “to a summer’s day.”

    I read on. . . . “But thy eternal summer shall not fade. . . .” That, of course, is what we wished for Johnna and Wally on that happy day in Palm Springs; that their eternal summer should not fade, although it was spring and although our lease was only for a week.

   And so I wrote: “It is with full-throated ease, Johnna and Wally, that on this blessed spring day we wish you an eternal summer that shall not fade.”

    “How’s that?” I said to Mary a few moments later.

    “Perfect.”

    “Would you write it then? Your handwriting’s much better than mine.”

    It was only after she’d done so that I confessed I’d largely lifted from Keats and Shakespeare, adding that I trusted she agreed that my lifting had been uplifting.

   I often wonder when people pass away if they can still hover a few days and get a closer look at what’s happening down below on earth. Like our creator, can they see all? My mom passed away in April, and if she can see that I’m not wearing lipstick, allowing my animals on the furniture, and not always styling my hair, then I’m in big troubles, as one of my children used to say.

    “Let me ask you something, and tell me the truth,” my mother said, standing in front of my mirror one day. “Does my bosom look too big in this sweater?” She was 89 and getting ready to go to the nutrition center at the Montauk Playhouse, where she would be the only woman at a table of men. “I don’t want them to think I’m showing off,” she said of the other guests, most of whom were at least 75. The statement says a lot about her; yes, she was vain, but she was also very kind and cared about other people’s feelings.

    Mother’s Day is on Sunday, so how can I not write a column in her honor? But I promised David, my editor, that it wouldn’t­ be a sad one. She died on April 6 at 92 years old, after living a good, long life that should be celebrated. And my mom loved celebrations, especially if she was the center of attention, which she often was, mostly when she got up and sang around a piano or took to the dance floor.

    Whenever we had family gatherings out here in Montauk, a bunch of us would inevitably head down to the Shagwong late at night, with my 80-something mother in tow. She flirted with the waiters and even had a crush on one of them, whose nickname is Hollywood — for his good looks. She also befriended one of the chefs, who occasionally sent her greeting cards on her birthday or gifts for no occasion, one a Yankees shirt after he learned of her favorite team. After she passed, he was one of the first ones to come to my house and offer his condolences. She would have loved that!

    While consoling me recently, an older resident of Montauk told me to just keep hearing her voice in my head, and I immediately thought, Do I have to?

    There was a wake for her in the Bronx on her 93rd birthday on April 9. My sister, brother, sister-in-law, two grandchildren, and I were with her when she passed away in the hospital. As I looked down upon her, I couldn’t help but think what beautiful, unlined skin she had. She was always the first to tell her children and everyone else to use sunscreen, and was a walking advertisement for it. Her proudest moments came when people, especially doctors, expressed shock when learning her age. She was a looker, my mom.

    As much as we loved her, though, her advice wasn’t always wanted. She was in show business, a professional dancer, and her words of wisdom always had a bit of vanity to them.

    She hated my naturally curly hair, which is long and can sometimes look quite wild. In my teen years, she bought me a fall, which was basically a long blond fall of fake hair, similar to what these days would be called an extension. I wore it once in public and was teased unmercifully by my Bronx friends, so back on its Styrofoam head it went, never to be worn in public again. But don’t think I didn’t preen in private before my mirror while wearing that long, fake hair.

    She always told my sister and me that we should go to a stylist to get short, layered haircuts. My hair being what it is, which in all fairness is genetic and mostly her fault, a short, layered cut would make me look like Bozo the Clown, or worse.

    When we were younger, she hauled us off to Mimi de Paris for perms, as if I needed a perm, and short haircuts. I remember being dragged kicking and screaming because I didn’t want my hair cut. And Mimi was a fake, a girl from the Bronx with bleached blond hair.

    As I got older I let my hair grow in defiance. But she never let up. When I picked her up from my sister’s house to take her to my house for dinner, the first thing she would do when she got in the car was reach over to tuck my hair behind my ears. “Why don’t you pull it back into a ponytail?” she would ask, with a bewildered look on her face, as if I hadn’t wanted long, straight hair my whole life. As she got on in years, I learned to ignore her hair comments and tell her I was getting it styled next week, which always made her smile in anticipation of my new short, layered hairdo.

    She was a pip, our Marie, and said the damndest things. But we loved her, deeply and thoroughly, even though, quite frankly, she often drove us crazy. My siblings and I are nothing like my mother. She never left the house without a swipe of red lipstick. I don’t wear lipstick, always gloss or balm, my sister doesn’t wear lipstick, and thank God my brothers don’t wear lipstick.

    She always had her hair coiffed and sprayed, and she dressed in what she called one of her cute little outfits. If a couple of pounds were gained by one of her children, she had no qualms about letting the culprit know and always commented on our outfits before an event.

    If Mom is looking down on us from above, she has probably already made a lot of new friends, all males I’m sure, and might attempt to send us a message. I just hope it’s not about my hair. I’m imagining walking into my bedroom one of these days and finding a levitating hairbrush hanging in the air. That might be all it takes for me to make an appointment with Mimi de Paris just for my mom.

    Janis Hewitt is a senior writer for The Star.

   Readers of this column may remember that a few weeks back I wrote about our family’s ongoing scuffle over whether or not to buy an expensive pet pig. The battle lines had this columnist on the “no” side, Mom and one daughter on the “yes” side, our 7-year-old daughter on the “sounds okay to me” side, and the 2-year-old oblivious and looking for his finger paints.

    Since then, I have been on the receiving end of a full slop trough-worth of pleading and wheedling — and a forced march to visit Gone Local, a shop in Amagansett whose owner, Susan Seitz-Kulick, keeps what I have to admit is a cute piglet behind the counter.

    Twinkie, as I think the little thing is called, sleeps on a pile of blankets under a desk, goes for walks on a leash, and will do tricks for treats. According to Susan, her pet pig likes my daughters, and, Susan says, Twinkie does not care for just anyone. This is a woman for whom retail comes naturally, it appears.

    I should make it clear that Susan does not sell pigs. Gone Local is stuffed to the rafters with decorative objects and handmade crafts and do-dads of the sort that might appeal to gift-seekers and summer visitors looking for mementos. She adopted the piglet when her son decided he could not keep her. Oinking every now and then, the piglet startles unsuspecting customers. It’s all very cute.

    Despite vocal protest on my part, the pig-wanting side of the family continues unfazed. I open a computer in the morning to find that someone has been searching for tiny pigs online and corresponding with breeders — who can charge upward of $1,500 per porker. I think it’s a scam and a fad, but the family pays me little mind.

    Although my older daughter started it, my wife now insists she is getting herself a pig no matter what. Ellis, who has started nursery school, is increasingly independent, and Lisa says she wants something little again to care for. Maybe she’ll become a breeder, she says. I say if she does, the pig can live in the house; I am going to move into the shed.

    She says, “Fine.”

   Perhaps more disturbing than the hazing death itself — on Nov. 19, of a 26-year-old Florida A&M University student who was a drum major in its marching band — is the knowledge that brutality is ingrained in the culture of certain collegiate activities and Greek letter societies . . . and accepted by adults who should know better. It turns out, according to press reports, that a gauntlet of punches and kicks, called Crossing Bus C, was routine among band members, and that they felt it proved their strength and instilled pride.  

    I have not come across a good explanation of why it took almost six months for those allegedly responsible for Robert Champion’s death to be charged. But even if faculty members and administration did not actually conspire to cover up the killing, as a blight on the university’s prestigious band, we are certainly left with the impression that they knew about and tolerated hazing in general. That so many were on the bus when the hazing occurred, including a bus driver, is shocking.

    Compare what happened in Orlando, Fla., to the public outrage over the fact that it took authorities from Feb. 26 to April 11 to charge George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin. During the six-month investigation in Florida, there were multiple incidents reported of hazing gone wrong. Among the 13 band members finally charged this month in Mr. Champion’s death is a 19-year-old who already had been accused of taking part in a hazing incident in which a 20-year-old woman’s leg was broken. That he continued to be an active member of the band indicates that hazing was condoned. Eleven of the 13 in the Champion case were charged with third-degree felonies and are facing no more than six-year prison sentences, if convicted. Is a crime less serious when it is committed by a group?

    A reporter on the Orlando Sentinel sent me the ages of the 11 charged with felonies. In addition to the 19-year-old, three are 20, two are 21, two are 23, two are 24, and one is 26. Should they be considered adults? They are old enough, indeed, to serve in the military, to vote, to drive, to live where they please, to take out bank loans — to shoulder all the normal, everyday responsibilities (and benefit from the normal, everyday advantages) of being an adult.

    The Florida A&M Marching 100’s specific forms of hazing, apparently, are somewhat atypical. The rites of passage of the average collegiate team, fraternity, or sorority most frequently hinge on requiring new members or pledges to imbibe insane quantities of alcohol, even when the risks and consequences of alcohol poisoning have been drummed into incoming freshmen’s heads during orientation week. Those who allow themselves to be subjected to dangerous hazing rituals are complicit in their own dehumanization, it seems to me.

    Florida A&M suspended four students and fired the marching band’s director, but then reinstated them. Students protested when some called for the university president’s resignation. An anti-hazing committee has been set up and a $50,000 fund established for faculty research into the nature and extent of hazing on campus.

    It will take a lot more to stop to it, to convince young men and women — in Florida and elsewhere — to find something better to do than degrade others and themselves.

   Michael Heller, who walk­ed away with pretty much every photography prize at the recent state press association contest, said in walking up to me at Herrick Park the other day that he’d seen only one other rugby game and therefore knew practically nothing about the sport.

    “I’ve seen hundreds of rugby games,” I said, “and I know nothing either. Though what you want to do is zero in on a maul — that’s when they’re standing up with the ball and pushing and shoving — which ought to nicely fill up your frame. Lineout plays, where the ball is thrown in from the sidelines and where you are confronted with a tower of graspers who either want to catch it or tap it back to their mates, also are pleasing. . . . It’s hard not to get good pictures at a rugby game.”

    Violence and grace . . . truth and beauty. . . . They make such sports nuts of us all.

    “There is such a thing as a free catch in rugby, I’ve been told,” I said later to Isabel Carmichael, one of our hawk-eyed proofreaders. (She’ll catch you out if you don’t watch your grammatical step.) “But I doubt if you said, ‘Mark!’ any in the phalanx of onrushers would pay attention. You’d be interred where you stood — in deep doo-doo.”

    And then I went on to say that because the ball’s always live when it’s in-bounds, and because blocking’s not allowed, and because there’s no spearing with helmets, as in football, serious injuries in rugby are far fewer than in football. “It’s mayhem with a difference,” I said, “and afterward they raise a glass to their antagonists, their bloodied buddies. . . . It beats suicide bombings by a long shot. Though if rugby were to become the vehicle for settling international disputes, we’d no longer be King of the Hill — we’ve got a ways to go in that regard.”

    Even so, the madness is fun to watch, whether you understand what’s going on or not.

    And so, godspeed to our Montauk Rugby Club stalwarts as they head out this weekend to Pittsburgh, where they’ll clash — and later rub elbows with — their peers from the South, the Midwest, and mid-Atlantic. Good ruck to them all.

   My ex-husband came to Shelter Island to deliver the remainder of boxes I had stored in his basement, my former residence on the North Fork. “You have a lot of love letters in there,” he said. “Really?” I asked, surprised both by the information and the fact that he had apparently read the letters, which were not from him. I had been wondering what might be contained in the delivery that might be interesting, useful, or exciting, but did not consider love letters. Life is rarely anything similar to what I expect these days.

    Not just love notes, there were cards, drawings, and best of all, photographs of my various past lives. The interesting ’80s and ’90s hairstyles and outfits were pictured, along with every boyfriend I had in those two decades. I flipped through, flooded with memories such as a cruise to the Bahamas and trip to Las Vegas that my parents never knew I took. Now they will. Sorry, Mom and Dad. I am glad they survived raising four girls; it could not have been easy.

    Some of my relationship choices were considered mistakes by my family and friends. I admit that one or two were odd and even dangerous choices, but if I had not dated those that I did, I would have missed out on some amazing experiences. Many seem like a dream now. I would have never lived on Fire Island, barefoot on the beach for an entire spring and summer season. I wouldn’t have traveled to London and Amsterdam, or have spent six weeks in Key West. I would have never been part of Army life in Clarksville, Tenn.

    A few of the experiences were definitely not amazing in the euphoric sense, but were important in the grand scheme of life. They had to be. Take, for example, a terrorist attack with a resulting war that sent my husband to the Middle East, while I lived in the Hamptons opposed to the whole idea.

    I expected the trunk full of wedding memorabilia, but I didn’t know what to do with it. I put on the fancy wedding hat, looked at a few of the cards from friends and family, and was thankful to have an attic. “I’ll think about that tomorrow,” I told myself, one of my favorite Scarlett O’Hara lines.

    I did take the empty bottle of champagne from our first toast to the recycling center, a trip made to the soundtrack of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” As I drove away from the dump, my iPod randomly landed on my wedding song. One of the men pictured in the box of memories always said that there was a “spiritual D.J.” that sends messages through the stereo. I believe it. He is an example of a guy nobody could understand why I dated.

    Over all, positive memories poured from the box, with kind words and professions of love, as well as a picture of a tattoo with my name. Maybe I do want some of that again. Seeing all of the boys in the box together, most of whom I thought were “the one,” confirmed the validity of destiny to me. There is not “one,” not for everyone, anyway. I was in love for a time, and so were they, according to the letters. When the relationships ended, it felt wrong and painful, but the pain went away, and if there were no ends, the others would have never wound up in the box.

    Carrie Ann Salvi is a reporter at The Star.

   What a long strange trip it’s been.  

   I’m talking, of course, about Mary’s uncanny success in The Press’s N.C.A.A. tournament pool.

    Although this is written before the final outcome is known, I think she’s already merited accolades. I told Cailin Riley, The Press’s sports editor, the other day that it was “the sports story of the week.”

    The fact is neither Mary nor I was eager to take part in March Madness inasmuch as neither of us knew what we were talking about. But don’t let that dissuade you, said my mother-in-law, who will bet on absolutely anything, and whose best results were achieved in her inaugural try, when she knew nada.

    With the deadline for submissions fast approaching, I ripped out the predictions of Newsday’s sportswriters and followed their advice down the line, including the upsets they’d forecast, and made out my bracket just to get it done and over with. Meanwhile, Mary deputized me to fill out hers also.

    I did, but later that day she called to say she was making some changes.

    Apparently, she was having second thoughts. And, as her suitable-for-framing final entry, replete with erasures, smudges, and X-ings out attests, she was having some third thoughts as well.

    This, I should add, is all well and good, for as the book on the brain I’m reading now says, our gut instincts are often wrong, and that it is only upon reflection that we can be said to be really thinking.

    In contrarian fashion, then, Mary went with the teams I hadn’t. And that was how she came to be at the top of the heap, bestriding numerous prostrate sports-savvy males, as Kentucky and Kansas prepared to meet in the championship game Monday night.

    “My father used to say that a $2 bet would get you off the fence mighty quick,” she says as we settle in for yet another televised roller-coaster ride.    And then, of course, there’s the head and the heart. Her heart said Chapel Hill and her head said Kansas in the quarterfinals, “though N.C. State was the key.”

    The downside to all of this is that I, an early casualty, have watched her undergo three — nay, four — meltdowns ending in utter despair in the past couple of weeks. On Sunday, I was left to keep vigil after she had, in her words, used her head (“Ohio State’s a better team than Kansas”) and had gone to bed.

    Around midnight, my partisan passions having been further inflamed by draughts of triple-distilled tequila (a birthday gift from my mother-in-law), I joyously took note that there was not a dry Buckeye eye to be seen throughout the Superdome and ran to give Mary the news that Kansas, which had trailed by as many as 13 points near the end of the first half, had come back to win 64-62, but she was sleeping the sleep of the blessed.

    What a long strange trip it’s been.

   Even though the “Mast-Head” this week is about the editor’s household and backyard pets (see below), I can’t help but get in a few words about how I wound up with a 23-pound cat named White Boots.

    About seven years ago, my oldest granddaughter, the pig-wanting girl in the “Mast-Head,” happened to be taken to the Animal Rescue Fund’s kennels for a special afternoon adventure on the occasion of her fourth birthday. That she might fall in love there with a kitten had not really been considered by her mother, who happens to be allergic to cats.

    Thus began my granddaughter’s first tearful campaign for a pet of her own. She begged her aunt to adopt the kitten for her, but that wasn’t practical: Her aunt was working in New York City and wasn’t often in her small apartment. She pleaded with her maternal grandmother, who lived in a Manhattan apartment and, well, didn’t know from cats. Then she got to me.

    I like to say I am more of a dog person than a cat person, but our family had had plenty of cats over the years, and I was between pets at the time. So, aware of what was in store, I went back to ARF with her to take a look. Although there was some question about whether he was the same kitten my granddaughter had fixed on originally, we chose a gray tabby with a luxurious white bib and tidy white boots. She gave the kitten the kind of name a 4-year-old might choose, White Boots, and she promised to visit all the time to take care of him. How could I say no? It not only meant a pet, but visits from a grandchild.

    As might have been expected, her cat-tending visits and interest waned. Besides, her parents had more to do than to make sure she kept her cat appointments. As time went by, she was treated to a dog of her own, the shaggy Cavachon mentioned in this week’s “Mast-Head.” And it was she, who will be 11 on her next birthday, who recently decided she wanted a pig.

    I had forgotten how old White Boots was until he started showing signs of indigestion and was taken to the vet this week. His age had been duly noted when he was neutered and information about him was still on file. That’s also how I learned what the formidable White Boots, the largest cat I’ve ever known, weighs. (I’ll resist the urge to insert a pig joke here.) A simple, over-the-counter remedy and a change of diet were prescribed. I have every reason to expect him to thrive. With all this talk of pets, though, I can’t stop thinking that it is time to get another dog.

    After my last dog, Goodie — named for colonial East Hampton’s reputed witch, Goodie Garlick — died, I decided that I couldn’t get another dog unless we put in an invisible fence, and I had qualms about those. Now, I’m beginning to think I might find a dog who wouldn’t mind spending some time by him or herself in a portion of the backyard that has a conventional fence. We do already have such a fence, but I’ve been afraid that a dog would howl in despair at being left there or would be able to dig out.

    As I imagine it now, I ought to have a dog that is neither too small nor too big. Although if someone offered me a Newfoundland, like the lovable Meg — the first canine of my adult life — I would have a hard time saying no. If anyone wants to take this as a hint, they’re welcome.

   The other night Mary realized she was missing the news.  “That’s good news,” I said, knowing that for her but to think is to be full of sorrow.

    (Keats said that by the way, not me, but I like it.)

    We are, as this is written, about to be transplanted temporarily in the ersatz environs of Palm Springs, where one of our daughters is to be wed. The weather ought to be good. Of course, it’s good here too, as it’s been all winter, inclining one to stay put, but at the end of the day filial ties win.

    In regretting an invitation to our college class’s 50th reunion recently, I said I rarely made it over the Shinnecock Canal anymore, and while that may have been a slight exaggeration it is true that I feel more and more at home at home. Bluebirds at the backyard feeders would make it perfect, but Bruce Horwith told me they prefer open areas such as you find around the airport and Napeague Meadow Road to the woods. We do have woodpeckers, though, goldfinches, flickers, nuthatches, and soon, I expect, irrepressible Carolina wrens that often nest in our flower boxes or in the outdoor shower.

    There are so many moles in the front yard that it would take a weapon of mass destruction to rid us of them, and so they, making themselves very much at home, continue to fluff things up. Walking on our mossy lawn is like walking on a lumpy mattress, a not unpleasant sensation.

    While I won’t be at the college reunion in body, I will be in spirit, in the form of a rather cheery essay on the passage of time. I should rail against it, but, for the moment, I can’t complain. And, as a result, I’ve begun to call myself the Pollyanna of the class of ’62. I told one of my college roommates that to remind me life was not all wine and roses I have a copy of Kafka’s short stories lying on my bedside table, and that, of course, I’d not yet read them.