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“Close your eyes because all the great sounds of existence can best be heard with eyes shut!”

April 10, 2017

The morning has been a bit trying. Nothing I did made Gracie happy. I walked her down the stairs to the yard twice. I gave her treats three times. I patted her until my hand was tired. She wasn’t impressed. She sat beside me and stared. When I ignore her, she gave me the paw on my arm. When I continued to ignore her, she continued to put her paw on my arm. She drove me crazy. Finally, she got on the couch, got comfy, and went to sleep beside me. It is amazing how much my dog rules the roost.

Spring is happening all around me. Colors are coming back into the world. Hyacinths are blooming in my front garden. Purple, pink and red flowers are popping from circles of small fronds. The daffodils in the flower bed closest to the house are sun bright. Every morning when I get the papers, I see something new in the garden.

I have no energy today to do anything. I didn’t make my usual list of chores as I’m generally compelled to finish most of them. My logic insists if there is no list, there are no chores.

I heard the kids playing this morning around 8. There are 6 boys in two houses, and they are loud. They communicate by yelling. They go out to play before the school buses come. Most times they wake me up but not all the way up. I hear them, register the fact in my brain then turn over and go back to sleep. When I was in Ghana, I did the same thing with the call to prayer. A mosque was down on the street below and across from my bedroom during Peace Corps training. The mosque was small and was sandwiched between two houses. Arabic was written at the top of the smallest ever minaret. From that mosque, I could hear the muezzin sing the calls to prayer. The one at 3:30 or so used to wake me up then I got used to it. I listened knowing when it would end so I could go back to sleep. It was the same with the dawn call. Being awakened twice by a muezzin had become commonplace for me. I could never have imagined that.

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“The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.”

April 7, 2017

We’re back from the appointment for Gracie at the vets. The good news is she didn’t have a stroke. The head tilt is probably from a lesion on her brain which may cause problems down the road, but she is fine for now. Her weak back legs are just that, weaker than her front. I should continue what I am doing to help her get around. Gracie was given a refill of her pain meds and got shots which were due anyway.

I had my MRI, but it is too early to hear the results. I figure there won’t be anything there, my lower back, as the earlier MRI’s showed nothing.

The most painful part of the last two days has been the $700 the two appointments cost me. I won’t ever be cured of that.

Yesterday it poured all day, a deluge to use my mother’s description, but today is the loveliest of days. The sky is a deep blue. The sun is bright, an almost need to squint bright. It is warm. When I left the house at nine, it was already 48˚. It is flannel shirt weather, a downgrade (or maybe an upgrade) from sweatshirt weather. I could do my outside work today. I still have that list, but I don’t want to for no reason except maybe relief. I was worried about Gracie. I still am, but it is a general worry about keeping an old dog healthy. The dread is gone. I just want to enjoy the afternoon, maybe sit on the deck with the sun on my face.

Lots of green shoots are appearing in my front garden. I saw the bumpy bud of a hyacinth this morning. Its color is starting to appear, a light purple. Daffodils are blooming. The yellow ones are first. The white ones are budded and waiting their turn. On my trip down Cape last Tuesday, I sat in a line of traffic on 6A. It was a long line so I had time to look around. I saw a tree with tiny, tiny buds. They were red and easy to see. I was thrilled. For me, that is the second sign of spring, after the bulbs flower.

My grass is squishy with mud. The ground wasn’t frozen when the days of rain began last week so the extra water just stayed right there, right on top, making the grass muddy. Footprints stay when you walk across the lawn. I try to avoid that.

I’m getting sucked in. I can feel it. Today makes me want to believe it’s really spring, but this is New England, and there are no guarantees so I’m still a bit skeptical, but the weather report is so amazing I can feel that skepticism draining away. By mid-next week, we may hit 60˚ and 50’s all the way to get there. That’s spring. No doubt about it.

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“Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.”

March 3, 2017

Winter dropped by last night to remind us not to get giddy about spring. It will have to be patient, to wait its turn. I saw daffodil buds yesterday in my garden. They are still all green but soon enough they’ll flower. I figure winter is beginning to feel rushed.

The swamp around now would still have ice as the water wasn’t very deep. The remaining ice was mostly in the back on the shaded channels which ran between trees and what we called islands. We’d go as far back as we could. In some places we’d walk on the ice and stoop under the trees while in other places we’d have to go on all fours. We explored in the summer too but then we risked getting wet as we had to jump from island to island.

When I was a kid, we were explorers. We walked or rode our bikes all over town. We had favorite places like the field where the two horses grazed, the tracks which both ended and kept going, the zoo, and the dairy farm. I never got tired of trying the catch the horses, but I’m glad I didn’t. I watched the cows.

Growing up when I did was a gift beyond measure. It meant summers of riding my bike, walking all over town or sleeping outside. We were never afraid. Our mothers had taught us to refuse anything a stranger offered so they figured we were safe enough. They were right. I don’t even remember any strangers.

The first time I went to the movie theater at night was an event. I was 10. The movie was a fund-raiser for my girl scout troop. I remember walking around wearing my uniform and feeling important. My parents bought tickets as did most of the other parents. I don’t even remember what the movie was. I just remember feeling older as if I’d just passed a milestone.

Today is cold, 34˚. It is a sunny day which belies the cold. Tonight the low will be 17˚.

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“Live as many lives as you can.”

March 12, 2016

Today is lovely with a bright sun though I wish it were warmer than the 50’s. I noticed my hyacinth is so tall I can almost see the bumps of the whole flower. The daffodils have buds not yet ready to open but getting closer. The croci are blooming in the different flower beds. They grab your attention with their color as everything around them is still brown or grey.

Yesterday I needed only two things: toilet paper and orange juice. At first I figured to stay home and finish my book, but I knew I had no choice but to go out. Gracie and I left around 3:15. I decided I might as well go to the dump too. It was crowded. At one store, I checked to see if they had their spinach and puff pastry lattice topped hand pie. They didn’t but the cook said he’d make me some. It would take 15 minutes. I should have said no. I decided to walk around to waste time until the pies were done. I filled my cart. I bought yogurt, shrimp, a piece of pizza, a cinnamon coffee roll for this morning, some gourmet dog biscuits, honey and oranges. I did remember the toilet paper. Sometimes I go and forget what I need. I got my pies hot from the oven. I was praising them so much three other people bought some, and the pies were gone.

I don’t remember at what age I started to notice things like the spring flowers popping out of the earth or buds appearing on the branches. The changing leaves were easy to notice as we shuffled through piles of them on our way to school. Spring meant bike riding and light jackets, not flowers, to us. It meant Saturdays riding all over town. A chill was still in the morning air, but it wasn’t cold any more.

In retirement I have noticed the world I often overlooked when I worked. I have the time to look and see things like my bulbs growing taller and the appearance of the first small shoots of flowers in the front garden. I watch the birds. I stand outside in the early morning listening to their songs. My life has a far different pattern than it used to have. It is now filled with bright color and wavy lines which change from day to day. Life continues to be good to me.

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“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

April 12, 2014

The daffodils have bloomed. It was an overnight miracle. When I went to get the papers this morning, the first thing I noticed was the bright eye-catching yellow. I had been waiting for them to bloom as I knew they were close. I saw each lovely flower dipping ever so slightly as if in homage to the sun. I stopped for a while to check out the rest of the garden, not wanting to miss a single thing. I noticed one hyacinth has a red flower close to blooming. Other daffodils have buds almost ready to open. Small hyacinths dot the different gardens. White croci have appeared. My garden is alive and filled with spring.

The sun is bright, but the day is chilled by a slight breeze. I was on the deck for a while watching Gracie in the yard and the birds at the feeders, but I got cold so I came inside for coffee and some biscotti, orange-cranberry.

Yesterday I bought flowers, primroses, and a new pot for the front steps. I’ll plant them today. They are hearty flowers which will survive the 40˚ nights. It is still too early for garden flowers, and I’m champing at the bit. I love buying flowers. I also need several new clay pots for the deck, and my small vegetable garden needs the fence fixed. Spring brings lots of garden chores, even for small gardens like mine.

My laundry is sitting in the hall. Today is day one. I brought it down from upstairs this morning.  The longest it has sat in the hall is three days before I couldn’t take it anymore. It isn’t as if doing the laundry is anathema. It is just one of those things. When I was a kid, I always thought that making the bed was a waste of time because it got slept in again that night. I figured it was easier leaving it in the morning as it was already cozy from the night before. My logic was generally refuted.

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“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”

March 9, 2013

Enough! Enough! I have endured too many sunless days. Today is cold and cloudy. I can deal with cold, but I’m sick and tired of cloudy. That last storm with its snow, rain, slush and wild wind was just a walk in the park on a nasty day, more like nasty days as the storm lasted close to three days. Nobody complained. Most people just shrugged. That’s the way it’s been. I am, however, out of shrugs. I’m complaining. Give me some sun!

When I lived in Ghana, we went months without rain during the dry season. The sky was blue every day. The grasses were dead, browned by lack of rain. The fields were empty. Any leftover millet stalks had been burned away. Every day was the same. We used to joke by saying it looked like rain knowing full well rain was months away. That never got to me. I knew what to expect. I knew the rains would come as they did every year. It was just a matter of patience.

This morning I filled the bird feeders. It was from guilt because when I looked out the kitchen window I saw a house finch and a gold finch sitting longingly at the empty feeder. I filled a bag with sunflower seeds and went out and filled all three feeders. It was cold out there, and I expect the birds to be appreciative. A thank you banner wouldn’t be amiss.

A few of the daffodils I bought the other day have finally opened. The flowers are beautiful, and their bright yellow has helped a little to satisfy my need for color.

Winter clothes should be colorful. We should be wearing bright blues and yellows and pinks and any other colors which catch our eyes. It is the season most in need of color and the one with the least. Next year I will wear colors all winter.

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