Wednesday - 68th

All that delicate greenery, all the emergent blooms, the buds of future flowers, the pinks, whites, yellows, purples, the warm breezes, the blue skies with the occasional puffy white cloud -- they've conspired to help you find the joy that's so hard to work up in the weeks of the pandemic. Look here! -- they're telling us. Forget about everything else for a minute and look here!


I wake up and I scramble out of bed. Or bounce out of bed. Or spiral out and zip downstairs. If you are in Wisconsin and you have a garden and you have a bit of time on your hands, you will rush to be outside in that yard today. It's a given!

(Good morning, mighty lilac!)






(Hello, little anemonie!)






(Perfectly beautiful...)






(Swallow, returning to the garage to her nest...)






(It's all so lush...)






(the girls, gossiping...)






The rains have really helped the weeds sprout and deliver a hefty amount of invasive plant matter. Everywhere.

I weave my way through the flower beds, bucket and hand spade with me, humming, yes humming as I go along.

Within an hour or two (who's counting), Ed is up and he joins me. Ed doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeve or even inside his pocket. But today he is full of words of praise and happiness. Working on some tool repair job next to patch of ferns and geraniums brings out the sweetest grin. Scanning the flower beds, he marvels at their early season magnificence. You just can't help yourself on a day like this!







Breakfast, on the porch.


\



And then it's back to my weaving pattern -- this way and that way, pluck, dig, snip. Pluck, dig, snip.

All the way until lunchtime. Not my lunchtime. A little Chicago girl's lunchtime!






Primrose! Tell me about your day!!





She does. And it's wonderful.


Snowdrop is here in the afternoon.

I have given up trying to predict what will grab her during her visits here. There will always be reading time and eat-a-huge-bowl-of-grandma-fruit time. Beyond that, the girl is very careful to pick stuff that feels exactly right.

Much of it is outdoors today. First, she wants to check if the cherries are out and ripe yet!






Then she wants to plant some flower seeds.






And water them.






She instructs the cheepers to leave her seeds alone!






It strikes her then that she ought to feed the cheepers. I'm agreeable. They're agreeable.






And eventually, after this lego project and that book and more cherries and a jam sandwich, I take her home. Where this guy is happy to see her...






Back at the farmette, all is quiet. Ed is biking. I take out the pans, bring in the mushrooms delivered today by the Funghi Farmers, rinse off Matt's spinach and get to work. Wednesday night is frittata night. It hasn't the rhyme to it, but it's nonetheless the perfect dish to have waiting for a guy who has been riding up and down the hills of south central Wisconsin for a handful of hours.







During my drive home tonight, I listened to a brief NPR news clip about how one can help kids stay upbeat during these tough times, where nothing is as it was three months ago. It seems some of us are predisposed (for whatever reason) toward optimism. Others struggle to see a cup as half full. But it's not a given that you should remain with your half empty mindset. You can actually teach yourself to redraw the image of a dire situation, so that it becomes for you a half full cup after all.

In the alternative, you can get a boost from stepping outside on a day like this one. Look closely at something green, pink, blue... Something beautiful. Take a deep breath and hold it for a couple of seconds. Then exhale. And thank nature for giving us this incredible gift of a perfect May day.