Saturday

Well that was a morning marathon! The thing is, I didn't feel it to be that until I sat down in the afternoon and thought -- my, but this left leg could use a nice ice bath! All components of the morning were wonderful. One of those May days that English poets celebrated with such perfect verse (I'm sure many others have as well, but somehow I associate poems about meadows and wildflowers and May sunshine with all those nature loving women and men who lived in the vales and along lake shores of northern England where meadows are as ubiquitous as the spring showers that feed them. Think: Blake and "Spring:")

Sound the flute!

Now it's mute!

Birds delight,

Day and night,

Nightingale,

In the dale,

Lark in Sky,

Merrily,

Merrily, merrily to welcome in the year!

A very early morning walk.

And then a quick trip to Madison Sourdough to pick up breakfast treats. 

(on the drive to the bakery: that's how blue the sky is!)

The treats are for later. Breakfast is going to be more like brunch at our house. I have a very important event before I can even think about cutting up fruit and frothing milk for my coffee.

The thing is, Sparrow has his dance "recital" at 9. Like Snowdrop, he takes dance at the Storybook Ballet studio and they open up the last class to family, going through some of the moves with the kids and ending with a few choreographed steps to music and a story line (in his case -- Rapunzel). 

Sparrow loves this class. All the others are already into their second year of dance, but it's his first. 

(the last quarter hour is "in costume")

Still, he is a musical boy and he has a pretty good sense of rhythm, and he's happy as a clam to have his mom and me in the audience. (His dad and brother are with Snowdrop at her violin lesson, which actually works well for me, as only two guests are allowed per student.)

(congratulatory hug!)

Back at the farmhouse Ed and I sit down to breakfast. Outside!

And now we are out again, working on that meadow by the peach orchard. 

There isn't any rain in the forecast for the next dozen days, so Ed works the hose over to that side of the barn and I give it all a good soak. And still, we need more seeds! To be continued.

And this is when I realize I've been up and running without a good icing of the knee. Pause. Ice. Back to work!

Our afternoon adventure has us going back to Natalie's to pick up additional watermelon and melon seedlings. They were our success story last year and we surely have the space in the back of the barn to let those vines crawl along the ground.

And of course, as long as we are at Natlaie's, we pick up just a few more phloxes because I found another corner of a field that has been taken over by weeds and wouldn't it be nice if I cleared it and filled it with some place holding perennials? Yes, I do realize this is more of a major project -- so big that I had let it slide last year, even when both knees were functional. But of course, the more you let something slide, the harder it is to get a grasp on the situation. I'm perfectly capable of bending both knees (somewhat) now -- in something like a crooked Warrior Yoga position! You can dig a lot that way!

So I get to it. 

And now it is nearly evening. Ed sits down to plant all those baby melons and cucumbers, with Dance keeping him company...

... and the grasses are getting so tall that I get back on the tractor mower to cut down this paths again!

(tall hens hardly visible in very tall grasses!)

It's way past supper time. I cook up shrimp in a stir fry with lots of young green garlic. Ed really overplanted the garlic seeds this year and many have crept into my flower bed. This is a gift, actually. I pull the extra ones out right about now -- they lend a delicate garlic flavor to any dish.

A beautiful day. A tad on the busy side, but with many, many outdoor hours in the mix. You could not ask for a finer May 20th.