Feels Like Spring - at Least on the Inside

According to the latest weather report, spring is taking her sweet time. I can sympathize with her drip-like-molasses nature. But the children of this house are springing forward, with or without the weather's blessing.



Yesterday, we grabbed spring by her indecisive bootstraps and pulled her inside. We began our little planting project outdoors (mama thinking this would be the cleaner option), but the wind felt like puffing his chest and warning everyone about the coming storm. Dirt was in the air and our eyes. So after filling our little toilet paper tubes with seed-starting soil, we took our project indoors where Audrey added a couple broccoli seeds to each tube (and accidentally showered the rest of the miniature peppercorn-looking seeds across the brown rug).



A sprinkle of water and one labeled tongue depressor later, and our makeshift seed-starting cells were set - for whatever spring has in store (or at least for the laundry room counter).


*I found the directions for the toilet paper roll seed-starting cells in Gayla Trail's Grow Great Grub.

When the One You've Been Stalking Doesn't Love You Back

Spring and I are star-crossed lovers. I long for him all winter and watch for any small sign (the snow melting, a bird's call, the first crocus) that might signal his early arrival. I watch him through child's eyes: perfect Spring with his fresh green suits and manicured lawns, bringing flowers to all the ladies. I would like to appear nonchalant, unimpressed with his show of vibrant color and stormy moods, but I can't help myself. I run to him as eagerly as the children who follow his every move. I would like to say that Spring is equally impressed with me, but to Spring I am simply the awkward girl rubbing my eyes and sniffling at the windows. I've tried all the regular cures (antihistamines, nasal sprays, allergy drops) to no avail. Blame it on the stars, our parents, or our lot in life - Spring and I were not meant to be. I try my best to go on in his midst, but by the last week in May I always find myself sequestered to the house, watching him court others from the window.



What's a girl to do with antsy children and an unrequited love? Go visit other poor souls who didn't fair so well with their environment, either.

And, while there is so much to see at the Children's Museum (today, other than our ritual visit to the dinosaurs, we spent our time in sections of the museum we hadn't seen yet and managed to stay four hours), I tend to find myself staring at the walls studying the tile work - never once looking out the windows. Take that, Spring.

Into the Dirt

Yesterday, rain close on our heels, we dug in the dirt with fingers and spade. We settled seedlings into new homes and carved out caves for new seeds to dwell and find their roots. With a few final pats of shifted soil, we left things where they lay, packed up our things, and took our leave through tiptoeing raindrops. We let the rain fall where it may and set about waiting - to see what the rains and sun will bring, what secrets those seeds might hold, like treasures unearthed from deep pockets.

First Fruits

The first ripe berry made its debut this week: red, ripe, and sweet. The picture doesn't quite do it justice, but I had to move fast. That berry didn't last long. Every day, Audrey runs out to check the strawberry plants for pops of red peeking out from green leaves (of course, sometimes she gets a bit eager and plucks an underripe one thinking it will pink up while sitting on the counter). Hopefully, several more crimson ones will find their way to her fingertips. Tis the season...

Goldilocks

Sometimes, it is not enough

to watch from the windows,

to wait out the storm,

to witness your world awash,

a living watercolor.

Sometimes, it is too much

to remember your favorite rain boots,

to wrestle with a zipper,

to rest underneath the long-reaching

fan of an umbrella.

Sometimes, you must give way,

go now, at once, bare-toed

into blurry, shadowed puddles

to linger ankle-deep,

to leave your mark.

Spring Song

The calendar claims it's spring, but the days have been wearing more like the tank tops of summer: full sun with a breeze against your arms. Outside days. Bare feet upon spongy grass days. Days when you can hear your neighbors' business through thin window screens. Zoey, you better find your way home now. It's eight-thirty and your mama's calling you in. Days for planning and planting, watering can in hand - mama catching through her lens that before summer's end her little one may need a big metal watering can to call her own. Muscles weary by day's end, but eyes still alight with visions of new beginnings: the sprouts of the ground, the return of feathers to air, baby toes digging into carpet trying to push forward. Using up all the strands of day until we retreat to shade and home and table. At last tucking into some bread, and dreaming of meals of the harvest to come.

Sweet Seedlings

I love a yummy shade of green,

and food that feels like a celebration,

especially those dishes that pack their own party favors.

But most of all, I love to relive the perfect combination of large seeds in pint-sized hands - hands grasping the difference between smooth and rough, big and little, seed and fruit. Small, small hands ripe with potential. Ready to explore. Ready to burst forth. Ready to grow.

Weekend

Some much awaited sunshine, a few healthy scoops of dirt, a handful of fruit plants, and a whole lot of wardrobe. As winter gives way to spring, we find our little girl letting go of toddler ways, eager to wear her newfound independence. Literally. On those days that she dresses herself, I can't help but think we've entered the Pippi Longstocking age: the age of spunk and sass, big dreams, and dirty fingernails. Oh the dirty fingernails on these early days of spring.

* I would like to say that no strawberry plants were injured during the production of this photo shoot. But, only time will tell.

Before the Rains

Easter by the Roadside

Some of you may have grown up with or read the Mercer Mayer Little Critter books to your children. Do you remember the one entitled I Just Forgot?

"Sometimes I remember,

and sometimes I just forget.

This morning I remembered to brush my teeth,

but I forgot to make my bed.

I put my dishes in the sink after breakfast,

but I forgot to put the milk away.

I almost forgot to feed the puppy, but he reminded me.

I didn't forget to water the plants. They looked fine to me."

That story describes me as well as any other. "Sometimes I remember, and sometimes I just forget." We left the house early yesterday. "I'm forgetting something," I said. It wasn't until we were several miles from the house that I remembered. "It's the camera." I had remembered the bottles, the extra changes of clothes, the thank you note, the checkbook, the diapers. I had forgotten the camera. And to fill up on gas. Sometimes I remember, and sometimes I just forget. Actually, I didn't even forget the last one - technically. I had remembered several days before. I just chose not to fill up. I was driving - who can remember where? I noticed the tank was half-full. I began carrying on an internal dialogue. It went something like this: They say you get better gas mileage if you keep your gas tank full. I should probably start filling my tank up when it's half-full. When it's not raining. Who are they and how do they know so much? [For those of you wondering how often I carry on silent conversations with myself, I hate to admit that I'm pretty much a non-stop internal dialogue machine. Have you seen The Informant? I am that man (minus the criminal shenanigans and deception) with fewer random facts and more fake interviews with Oprah and explanations to nonexistent police officers as to why it was necessary to have just run that red light.]

Well, I didn't think about that now-not-so-half-full gas tank again until Sunday when Jason told me to remind him that we needed to fill up after leaving my parents' house. Sometimes I remember, and sometimes I just (ahem) forget. Which, is how we came to be parked by the side of a farm-lined highway less than three miles from a gas station with an empty tank come Easter evening. It wasn't all that bad. The weather was perfect - a breezy warm spring (as if meant for stuck-on-the-side-of-the-highway folks) sort of day. The children were on their best behavior. More importantly, they were funny (always a plus when entertainment street-side is in short supply). The view wasn't shabby: fields, farms, and the sprouting of spring. And, Jason's mom and her boyfriend were ready with a gas can and willing to come to our rescue. I would show you a picture of our roadside stop, but um, you know.

Needless to say, I have no Easter photos for you today. No shots of pink polka-dotted Easter dress ruffles, or babes in blue knit hats, or brimming baskets of eggs. Nope. Today, you get the other snapshots of our weekend, those I did manage to capture: plumbing and planting.





Somewhere in between the spats of forgetfulness, a couple projects found their way to completion. First, a dripping faucet lost its leak. I should be embarrassed to tell you that we've had the hot water turned off on one of our sinks for a month due to this leak (but I admitted that I have lengthy conversations with myself, so I think we've passed the embarrassment threshold, no?). It's one of those hang-in-limbo projects: too easy to call the plumber about but not the sort of thing your mother teaches you over chocolate chips cookies while growing up. So it waited until I had sufficient time to search the web. At first, my search was fruitless. When I looked up leaky sink, I found how to fix everything but a simple faucet leak. Then, it dawned on me. I don't know how or why (but can you imagine the conversations she could hold with herself?), but Martha Stewart knows practically everything. From how to bake the perfect cake, to etching glass, to proper jail cell etiquette - she's your girl. Sure enough, she also knew how to fix a leaky faucet and demonstrated with beautifully photographed images. (You can check out her handy plumbing how-to's here.) A simple switching out of a washer (the circular black do-dad in the picture) and we were hot water happy and drip-free.

So just how do you celebrate a roadside rescue and plumbing success? By planting pumpkins, of course - our first planted seeds of the season. Now if I can just remember to water them. Hmm...

Malfunctions and Distractions

I'm experiencing a little technical glitch - camera-wise. I'm hoping it's simply a dead battery issue. I meant to go buy some today. But there was a more pressing errand to be run and the sun was shining, which (in my book) makes it a one-errand day. Sunshine is not to be wasted walking up and down the aisles of a windowless bulk foods store, even if one doesn't manage to make it out in the sun for more than grilling dinner. Even if one spends the afternoon in the kitchen doing puzzles on the hardwood floor while listening to the chink of aluminum bats hitting leather balls just outside. A slumbering baby, a toddler's pride at completing her puzzle, and a kitchen made new by a sunlit cast - all ample reasons to stay unplugged and put off batteries for another day.

So the only pictures I have for you are these of on-going projects. The first (taken with my phone) of Audrey creating her version of sock puppets - complete with arms and legs - using a kit given to her by a friend. The second, a picture I took a couple days ago as I worked on a project I hope to finish soon. Audrey named her creations: Audrey, Fluffy, and Gassy, ahem (I think she was actually naming it Cassie, but I laughed and said, did you say Gassy? - and it was all over then). I've only given mine first initials.

Maybe, tomorrow we'll go buy batteries. Or, maybe, we'll keep running on another kind of energy.

Pancake & Waffle Day

What, you ask, happens on a Pancake & Waffle Day (or Audrey & Daddy Day)? I came home Saturday night to find us the proud new owners of a tee ball set and a new baseball swing. New puzzles were stacked on the counter. Outside, lay the remnants of a house drawing lesson. (You see the line drawn between the houses? Audrey told her Daddy she had "attached" their houses).



The kitchen counter was punctuated with three blue mugs filled with water and germinating seeds. Which led...




to Pancake & Waffle Day: the sequel. Sunday was rainy. The connected houses had washed away. But the seeds were ready, so Jason went ahead with the planting. He assumed he'd be planting in the damp alone. But no sooner had he wrapped his fingers around the handle of a blue mug and Audrey was running to the closet for her coat and hat.

Granted, he did do most of the planting himself while she spent her time, shovel and worms in hand.

Until, she had amassed quite a collection (and told a few stories about salamanders and other such creatures),

who needed to find a new home, which Jason helped her dig in the garden. Ahh, those pancakes and waffles. I just can't seem to get my fill.

Hello, Spring.

Showers.

Flowers.

Today

We took to the yard in light-weight jackets.

Nate napped outside, nestled in his car seat on the patio.

I took down the, ahem, Christmas lights still clinging to our fence posts that between the baby, the surgeries, the sicknesses, and all things everyday, I had forgotten were still up (and our neighbors, too sweet to mention it, had let go without the faintest hint of a "you realize it's almost EASTER, don't you?).

Audrey played a game of tag with the neighbor's dog, neither one the least bit deterred by the fence posts in between.

We came in and invited the outdoors to come with us, closing only the screen door.

I did the dishes while watching two grown children swing in perfect unison.

As the sounds wafted in, we tossed together a pinch of this and cup of that. (Did you know they made measuring spoons for dashes and smidgens? Sometimes, even the smallest amounts count. Of course, these spoons were a gift from my mother, because mothers tend to know that the smallest things count.)

We made this bread that eats like cake. We broke into it before it had properly cooled and didn't bother to sit at the table.

Some days are bread that eats like cake: warm to the touch, sweet to the nose. They contain hints of forgotten magic (even if that magic is best stored away until December) that make you laugh at yourself. They remind us that barriers only exist where we see them, playgrounds need only be outgrown if we desire them to be, and sometimes, all you need is a smidgen.

For those of you interested in the bread, here are a few of our baking notes:

The recipe says to preheat your oven to 200 degrees C. We preheated ours to 350 degrees F. We baked our bread for around 40 minutes, our oven tends to bake on the fast side.

The recipes calls for 4 bananas. We used 3, because that's what we had on-hand, minus one bite - apparently, they didn't look overripe to Audrey.

The recipe uses 250 g of flour. We used 1 1/4 c.

It also calls for 125 g of dark or milk chocolate. I found a king-sized Hershey bar in the pantry and chopped 3/4 of it into tiny pieces, since the 2 bags of dark chocolate chips I had bought for just this recipe, ahem, disappeared a chip at a time with no final food product to show for themselves (I guess they eat like cake, too).

Hello, Promise.

If promises took on a physical form, they'd look like this. Hello, promise, may I call you spring?