Sunday

There is brilliant, warm sunshine outside (and it's slated to be with us all week long)! It's a sign! Most obviously, it's a sign that the growing season is truly upon us. Typically I do not feel confident about putting things that aren't hardy (yet) into the ground until mid May, but looking at the weather maps gives me confidence. We're to have a real heat wave by the end of the week. I can start planting!

That clear sky (and a good night's sleep) also gives us a bit more clarity in the vision that Ed and I have for our travel adventure (together at last!) in July. The short list of possibilities gets severely slashed: Nova Scotia? Out it goes! No long range hikes with wilderness camping (that is not so wild as to send chills up my spine). Long flight connections. (Me, I was pushing for it: imagine all the lobster shacks lining the waterfront!) Maine -- another cross out. Too wild (in the mountains), too busy and private by the southern coast. Too many ripples in the water and dangerous swells and sea tides for kayaking (by my estimation). And so we cross off and toss out ideas, until finally we are left with just one  -- something we keep coming back to. Something that appeals to us at some level (as you can imagine -- different levels for the both of us).

I'll let it dangle like that for now. After all, we may wake up tomorrow and cancel yet again. Or we'll go. And while I have the floor, let me assure you, I'm making far more compromises to reach a common ground! Far more! (If Ed had the floor, he would say the exact opposite.)

Alright. New flights booked, old ones cancelled. Several calls to distant places to make sure what we want (what Ed really wants -- again, I have the floor!) actually does exist. And then we put it all aside for another day. Finessing the details need not happen until later.


And now is the time to take out the shovel and dig up the garden -- both in the new flower field and, too, to rework portions of the old ones a bit. I have not one, but TWO water pistols (one looks more like a water machine gun) to keep Oreo at bay, but honestly, since his day away with the chicken mama, he's been rather less feisty.

Immediately after breakfast...






I go out to work the soil in the new flower field. (The cheepers follow. Oreo does too, but a little to the side of the action.)
















Picking out new plants and putting them into the ground then spraying them with a hose to settle them in -- this is the gardening routine that I love best. All the preparing, weeding, clipping -- all that is just background noise to the wonderful act of pushing something new into the soil, firming the dirt and stepping back to let nature do its magic.
 


(last year's expanded field)





(the beloved farmhouse, reflecting the blue sky)


In the evening, the young couple comes over, along with a friend, and with Snowdrop for a Sunday dinner at the farmhouse. A vegetarian meal tonight: roasted asparagus and radish, porcini mushroom and red wine risotto. I just get a wee glimpse and a brief cuddle with the baby. Snowdrop has plenty of doting hands to comfort her when the going gets tough!




 











Such a beautiful day... Inch by inch, row by row...