Pell-Mell Into the Spring Playtime

It's going to take a bit of adjusting to get used to these warm, sunny days. After a cold winter and a cool spring, 75 degrees feels like I can't breathe. A cool 11 o'clock breeze through the living room window that rustles the maple trees along the driveway feels like all the peaceful interlude for which I could ask on a Sunday night.

Congratulations on continuing to check this blog after such long absences over the past year - you are to be commended on your commitment to my literary efforts, bumbling as they are. I have bumped into enough of you out there to feel re-inspired to continue to write. The fact that this effort means something to you, means something to me. Please leave me a comment once in a while!

Well, the grace period is over (see last post to define "grace period".) We are pell-mell, tumble bumble into the spring work/play out in the yard. We have weeded, mulched, trimmed, planted (perennials, vegetables, herbs, annuals, trees!), transplanted, sprouted seeds, and mowed grass in the third gear of my Toro walk-behind mower, which is about the equivalent aerobic exercize of a 2 or 3 mile run. (I've even stirred up the year-old compost pile) All this in the wettest spring I can remember and with the most children I've ever had to take care of. I fall into bed exhausted, but it's a "happy" exhausted. I haven't had this much fun in a great while.

Our outdoor projects help us to learn about each other. Most of these projects start out in O's brain - she browses the catalogs, envisions the possibilities and orders the seeds and plants. Through conversation and looking over her shoulder, I soon get on board with the enthusiasm. After the seeds, plants, trees and mulch come, I work outside fiendishly in spare moments to bring all these visions to pass. While most of her ideas are brilliant and beautiful, I temper them with the practical aspects of cold reality and in the process of pouring myself into the said projects, begin to come up with ideas and alterations of my own. (wouldn't these trees look better over there?) These discussions and differences of opinion keep the conversation lively and the love warm - but perhaps this kind of ebb and flow of tension is what keeps our parents from being excited about planting their own gardens 30 years into the team effort. Be that as it may, I've seldom worked so hard, loved the earth so intimately, or tended so many plants as this spring.