Spring Ponderings

The trout lilies are blooming in the yard.

It's spring for real.


Nathan spent the whole day yesterday fixing up the garden fence. This is an urgent necessity with the imminent growing season if we expect to get anything out of our garden for ourselves. It also has a double purpose in (theoretically) closing the chickens inside the garden for a few weeks before planting (though I've carefully protected the few early things I have planted) so that they can work in the old mulch and find lots of bad buggies to eat up. Rototilling eating machines, those chickens are.

So he moved them all to a new temporary shelter in the garden after dark last night.

They were all on the wrong side of the fence by noon today.

That is, all except one straggly little hen who is usually particularly beset by the rooster. It is my personal opinion that she is faking an inability to get out of the garden.




Notice the cute little ladybug crawling down the stem of that little flower. Oh, what a fortunate shot! you're thinking. (Also: too bad it's not in focus.) No, on the contrary. There are pretty much lady bugs (the evil, biting kind, imported from Asia in a University Experiment Gone Horrible Awry) crawling all over everything, all the time. Everyday I vacuum several legions of them from the living room window. As I sit here, I find myself flicking them off my clothes and out of my hair and even, egads!, off my face.





Jonah is absolutely loving the gorgeous spring-time weather. He loves to be outside. He is somewhat hampered by a paralyzing fear of our (not-too-terribly-mean-just-a-little-pushy) rooster. Fortunately for him, Daddy's usually outside working, so Jonah can stick close and practice manly pursuits (like dragging a ladder to the playhouse and climbing on the roof to "fix" it) AND gain a little rooster-protection.




I am having a baby in three months. Three. A long time, and a very short time, all at the same time.

I think that the feeling of commingled anticipation, intense joy and vague dread is heightened for me right now, even though there are still three months to go, because five years ago (five!) we were awaiting Jonah's birth. I think I will always associate springtime with a little bit of that feeling. At the time, I remember thinking that it was very appropriate for the time of year.

I'm starting to feel somewhat unwieldy at this point. I realize that that is only going to increase from now on, and I have an awful lot of garden to plant in the midst of this growing lumbering bulkiness.

However, I find it endlessly amusing to balance my empty tea mug on my belly and watch it get kicked off.



Growth on all fronts. I love spring.