April 14th

And it continues.

We are famous for telling the kids -- "there's an upside and a downside to most things in life," and I do recognize that it will be hard to face frost, or even snow next week after being spoiled with heavenly weather this whole week. Too, everything has been growing rapidly and that means weeds have been exploding and I already have the feeling that I'm not keeping up -- a feeling that is usually reserved for early August! This morning, for example, I was going to do some spot crabgrass removal in the meadows, but I never even got to any of the meadows, because on the way, I picked weeds from the Big Bed, and then dumped several wheelbarrows of chips in naked spots, and by the time I finished working there, I was spent and it was past the lunch hour.

So yes, intense outdoor work began early this year.

Nonetheless, the upsides remain triumphant (as they often are if you have the mindset to look for them). The glory of all those daffodils is there for all to see (well, just me, Ed and Snowdrop today)! I am enchanted!

Breakfast, once more on the porch, though probably not for long, as we will soon be returning to chilly April mornings.

And then comes the work. Grueling, exhilarating. 

The afternoon is where things get really messy.

I see that it's time for me to pick up Snowdrop. And I see, too, that I forgotten to clear the table after breakfast. There is, for example, that jar of honey. I grab it, along with the vase of tulips, and the bottle of kefir and I guess it's a little too much and my hanging on to the honey jar by the lid is not such a great plan, because as I walk up the slitted steps (from the porch to the kitchen), the jar slips out from under the lid and crashes into a million tiny glass shreds, and the honey -- for there was honey in it! -- is dripping down through the steps, toward the basement window and up the stairs too, into the kitchen. Vessels of glass float in a sea of honey. Ants, on their annual prowl for spring nesting sites, are doing dances of joy. I can only say three words -- oh no! Ed!!!!

I can't leave him with this mess, can I? I offer a few minutes of help, picking up the biggest pieces of glass, cutting myself niftily in the process and that is my penance, because now I really do have to dash to Snowdrop's school while Ed is left with disassembling the steps, taking out the rocks by the basement window and washing it all, in an effort to remove the glass, the honey, plus all the debris that accumulates in hidden spaces underneath steps.

When I come back, Snowdrop plays outside... 

(and works too! the strawberries need watering!)

...while I attempt to put the finishing touches on the Great Clean Up Operation, though it's mostly done now. The ants walked away, disappointed.

And you'd think I let Ed retire to his work of machine designing and chopping up of fallen trees, but no. In my evening hurry, I once again mistakenly erase all the photos from the day from my camera -- something I do, oh, every six or eight months and here, too, I have to let out those three words -- oh no! Ed!!

I will say this much: I don't always call him for help. For example, when Dance brought in a mouse this morning and left it dead and on the living room carpet, I could well have picked it up and tossed it out myself. But when that same cat (she is on a roll today!) brought in a half destroyed (but still living!) chipmunk and left that, too, on our living room carpet, I had to ask -- what do we do with a half-dead chipmunk??

Too, I have to add that I was called into service as well: Ed asked me to help him saw off a high limb that is dangerously leaning on the barn roof. That was not easy! Still, the mishaps were the worst. Such a pain. And they are really awful when you are the culprit, the dumb one and you have to bother someone else to help you patch things up again. 

But, all this doesn't take away from the day which is astonishingly beautiful. Sticky, tricky and bumbling, and very humbling, but gorgeous to the end. Not too many photos though. Retrieving them from an erased card is a bother and by the end of the day, we were both really spent!