Friday - 63rd

We all love our kids, our grandkids, our partners, our friends. We love being with them. We love hearing stories about them, we love hugging them. All that is a given. Those are our big loves. Our anchors in life.

Then there are the little loves. Things that consistently make us happy. Content. At peace. Guaranteed. You do them, the smile comes back.

Everyone has a different bucket of small loves. Of course. And it's so interesting that the people you love will likely have only a little overlap with you in their own bucket of small joys. Oh, you may both like music or a beer at the local bar, but inevitably, you will diverge on hobbies or life styles or, well, a whole lot of things. As I often said -- Ed and I merged lives even though we had ostensibly very little in common.  It didn't diminish our love for each other. We just went on to fill our free time in very different ways.

I thought about this as I worked outside today. And what a day it is! 70F (21C), sunny. One of those totally perfect May days.

And I love perfect May days! I'm so hungry for them! The weather, the blossoms, or buds that soon will be blossoms, the freshness of it all!






I love it all completely. A small love, to be sure, but it's always there and it comes back each year as I am reminded of how much beauty returns to the landscape that we almost give up on in the dead of winter.

Breakfast, on the porch. We both love this morning interlude outside.






And then I work. I mow the path through the new orchard. I weed the front bed. I plant nasturtium. It takes up the whole morning and indeed, creeps into the afternoon, but it's time well spent. Working outside on a perfect May day stirs all those good endorphins within your brain, forcing a feeling of peace and yes, hope. You can't help but smile. A handful of small loves, all coinciding on this day to bring you a much needed break from worry.

(The crab apple is one day short of blooming!)






In the afternoon, Snowdrop is at the famhouse. But first come those moments of outside play.






I have these two garden fairies and I ask her to hide them in secret places. They'll keep an eye on the garden for us all season long.






And then she is off chasing a cabbage butterfly.






A field of dandelions brings out the puffs.






And my hurried attempt to produce a crown. I do this every year and she puts up with it every year.






But she is in a hurry to go inside. Those cherries! I show her the colander-ful. She says -- an infinity of cherries!  Ed challenges her: what's infinity? She comes up with a very credible answer.

And again a grandma thing: making earrings of the double stemmed cherries!






The rest of our time is a predictable mix of reading, building and longest of all -- story telling.





And then I take her home.


Evening. A May supper.  Just as on Mondays we want something snappy, so too on Fridays I never aim high. Today's foods? Chicken brats! With Blue Valley Farms spinach on the side.

Followed by pop corn. And cheese puffs.

You know what those are, don't you? -- Ed asks pointing an accusing finger at the bag of puffs. Ground up cornmeal with tumeric and who knows what else.
Hey, some people say tumeric is good for you.
Let's read the ingredients.
Let's not.

He does.

We laugh.

It's a good ending to a beautiful day. For all the impossibly tough times that we muddle through, there are days like this one. Yes really. Buckets of tiny loves and looming joys. Around the corner, waiting for us.

(Cat, on the porch, liking it as much as we do.)