Memorial Day

 

We think of this weekend (more than the day, some of us) as the official beginning of summer, and this year, after the last seige, we more than ever feel the need to open out and celebrate.  There will be a parade in town, and the cemetery will be adorned with flags for veterans...those for whom Memorial Day officially commemorates.

 I looked for the  formal photo of my father in his Navy uniform but found more quickly my parents' wedding portrait from January, 1944.  I suppose, being born a year later, that I am the memorial now, a personal testimony to wartime life.  My father, flying the coast of South America as an engineer on patrol, found out about my birth over the radio, and saw me only months later when their patrol returned to base in Miami.  There are so many stories they told of that life there...the apartment building (it is still standing) where they shared friendships and scarce resources with other families whose men were fighting...the maternity nurse who would cry that she had joined the Navy to see the world and was assigned there instead...the Miami Beach of wide sands, tall palms and thick gardens...scorpions who found their way into the kitchen.  

There were crashes in the jungle and repairs made by trading rum for parts and help.  Then the whole story of how my father, though exempt from service because he supported his mother and siblings, joined up suddenly one day, not wanting to sit at home (he worked for the post office, my grandmother's idea of a job with a future, though not his)  away from action and service.  Older than most recruits by sometimes a decade, and having seen more of the country and more of street life, too, he told of having to help shape the homesick, naive youths in his company to be of use to a unit. Somewhere I have a photo of them, he in the front, larger and older, against a sea of faces whose expressions ranged from brazen to bemused.  My uncle, a medic in the Army, told his own stories of that time; there was no tone of bravado in his. Nor in the reluctant sketches from older cousins, taken prisoner of war.

So Memorial Day has become for us a patchwork of second- and third-hand memories, for none of us in the family has seen war except from afar, both in time and space.  We "remember" those who fought for wars that others imposed on them; we "believe" that their fighting and suffering saved us our freedom.  Freedom for some of us, anyway, for sometimes it seems that the same divisive threats, the same antagonisms, the same bravados and blindness, rule the waves from neighborhood to globe.  

I'm sure some socio-anthropologist or historical psychologist has a theory about that everlasting human failure.  But it would be useless to read it; it just makes me tired.

photo by Sadie DiLiddo

Still, in peace for the moment, today we raise our flag to hope and to the brave; we pull together, as I have been doing yesterday and today, our picnics and cheer each other over drinks on the porch.  My aunt sends me this photo of her Memorial Day at the shore, a lifetime for me of peace, safety and care.

She asks us on the phone whether we are having our hot dogs and hamburgers, which reign in their memories as the chief menu for not only this day, but Fourth of July and Labor Day...the national days of memorial.  At 98, she has much to remember and memorialize. 

She may be disappointed in my menu.  I'm afraid that as much as I love inheriting and carrying on family traditions, I can't make myself be a hot dog and hamburger kind of celebrant.  Because we haven't begun our larger social activities here yet...our neighborhood is famous for them, but we are pretty cautious still...a few neighbors are joining me on my porch this evening. 

Here's what we are having:

It celebrates summer, and in no small way honors the bounty I feel grateful to afford.  Fruits of others' labors, herbs and flowers that grow in soil from others' work, food enough for family, company, and anyone else who shares a table, or a garden, or a life.

There are so many to remember on Memorial Day...soldiers, yes, but also everyone who struggles to keep us alive and well:  farmers, farm workers, day laborers, health workers and responders of all sorts who in all sorts of ways, whether we see or realize them or not, provide freedoms for us.  

Who perhaps lost their lives in that service, too.

For me, today is their day, too.

Standstill

 It's a beautiful warm day here, a thin layer of white overcast that hasn't overcome the sun.  I've had lunch, after a brief return to the library, then the grocery store for something I could microwave (my only appliance available at the moment).  Now I am in my rocker on the porch enjoying quiet.  There are still items on today's list to do, but I have come to a stop.

As has everything else round me.

The kitchen backsplash, the kitchen floor, the stone patio...nary a motion detected on any.  The backsplash, which my nephew Bob worked on for hours til late last night, is on hold due to child-care issues...understandable, considering.  

The flooring, which was ordered six or seven weeks ago (I have stopped counting) just came in last Friday, but the floorman Doug is still on his way back from taking his father to New York for the summer...also understandable. 

 As for the patio, which is my own task, that is halted for lack of inspiration:  I can't seem to come up with a viable plan, or the effort to think of one.  Stones lie pathetic in the pattern of yesterday, unsatisfactory, insufficient, unacceptable.

It doesn't help that after a sound, healthy sleep two nights ago, I managed only four hours last night.  Nothing pressing kept my mind buzzing; no caffeine kept me sleepless. Last evening, after Bob left, I read for a while an innocuous, rather self-aggrandizing novel by the otherwise brilliant writer MFK Fisher, yawning my way to lights out by ten or so.  At nearly midnight I tried the best thing I know for sleeplessness...Yogi Stress-Release tea, a honey and lavender blend...and though I began to yawn again, closing my eyes gently in anticipation of rest, it evaded me still.  All I could do was wait it out, as I listened to the clock strike one three times.  I woke a bit after five.  

This morning, I checked my list every few minutes for something to distract me from this ennui, and went about a few unimportant assays that weren't even on it...lackluster is the kindest description of what got me through lunch (gnocchi cooked in vegetable broth with collards and the leftovers of orange-celery salad). 

Thereafter I began to yawn again.  The porch on a quiet day has that effect, to be sure, not to mention a soporific lunch, but it seemed to me that in order to avoid a sense of guilt about doing nothing (not to mention an anxious walk past my topsy-turvy kitchen), I could haul myself out of the rocker to find my laptop and write.  If things were at so dead a stop, my fingers could nonetheless write about it.  As excuses go, I think this takes a prize, don't you?

I'd love to have written in buoyant tones, with pictures of my newly revived house, but alas, the photos here illustrate well only the notion of nothing doing.

Maybe in a while I will take a walk, where I haven't the energy to guess.  Still, it is a nice day, with a breeze that could entice me into it...if even that hadn't come to a standstill.

*******************************************************************************

Postscript:

There is something about the release of words that creates its own energy.  Did I go for a walk?  Not exactly.

Instead, as I closed my laptop, I looked out over the front slope and remembered an item on my list:  to move two lorapetalum from the dark of the side yard to the front where their own dark shade would be a pleasing, I hoped, foil to all the greenery.  

I stood up, slipped into my work shoes, went for the maddock and began to chop roots, dig up stones, free earth.  I filled the watering can.  I pulled out the first lorapetalum and plunked it in the new hole, piling up dirt around it and then pouring on water.  Cathy, working at transplanting in her yard across the street, came over, carrying her gardenia on a shovel. We conferred.  I did the second lorapetalum, and then drove to Southern States for good soil.

When I returned, on the front porch was a large box marked "Glass! Handle with care!" So I filled in the new dirt, washed up and tackled the frame I'd ordered for a monoprint I'd bought years ago from the Print Council exhibit to hang in the front room.  It fit perfectly.

Meanwhile a second package landed at the kitchen door:  twin overhead lamps for the workroom.  I assembled them, as easily as the frame, and gathered tools for hanging them.  I knew, though, that by that time...the clock striking five...I wouldn't trust myself on a ladder.  (Perhaps some nice son or nephew or neighbor would come by and affix them to the ceiling for me?)

Back on the porch, I looked down this time, and a curry plant I'd bought and planted, without knowing really what it was, caught my attention.  Google helped.  Turns out it needs sun, prefers dryness, and blooms in summer with beautiful yellow flowerlets perfect for fall drying.  And here I'd been faithfully watering it...had it complained that it couldn't swim without my hearing?

Out I went again to move it to the front where other like things grow...bluestem grasses and such.  While in that corner, I gathered some displaced marigolds and fed them with new soil.  

Tools returned to the shed, inside I went, about to settle back on the porch when...

...this time on the kitchen steps, footsteps:  Cathy and Steve coming to help me with that stump of a patio.  And help they did, giving me two new perspectives, new rationale, making me question exactly what I wanted.  New eyes are the best at seeing what I cannot about my own yard.  Now I've choices for a decision.  But "Don't decide right now," advised Steve.

So standstill no longer seems the theme of the day.  Things best happen in their own times.  Here I am, where I started, tapping away, releasing words.  Perhaps I'll sleep better tonight.

 

Strawberries

 For a few weeks now, I've been waking up a good hour before my usual time.  I don't know why, or how to kick the habit.  I've tried just staying in bed, eyes closed; I've tried slipping out quietly for a cup of water and going back to bed til light begins to show between the blinds...no help.  Instead, I give in and get up and get going on the project of the day.  This week, after the arrival of the rest of my belongings from storage (oh, the too many things I'd forgotten I had!), mornings have found me moving furniture, room by room.

At first it seemed overwhelming.  The removal men tried to help, at least placing the bulkiest in their appropriate places, upstairs and down.  The smaller pieces, though, I told them to leave for me to arrange when a sane moment descended.  They cluttered the middle of each room.  I have been working since then toward a reasonable order, twisting and turning things one room at a time.

Last Saturday, by five-thirty or so, I began attacking the kitchen...torn walls still awaiting tile, new flooring not yet arrived, recently abandoned and neatly labeled paint cans piled here and there, flecks of sawdust in new drawers and cupboards, etc.  It seemed impossible, which is admittedly not my usual reaction where space is concerned.  But I needed a kitchen, so I picked up a damp rag and plowed on, or in.  

I was hard at it, cutting shelf liners but seeming to get nowhere, when, around eight, a face appeared at the back door, announcing, "Nana!  Come on!  We're going strawberry picking!"

Talk about a brain-stopper.  "Oh, Alexander," I said, "I can't go now...I'm trying to get through this kitchen...look at the mess!  You go and have fun."

"It looks fine to me," said the boy coming through the door.  "Besides, it's Saturday!  Saturday is for playing."

Was it he or the universe speaking?  No matter...I hope I know a life message when I hear one.

"Okay," I told him.  "Just let me get my shoes on."

And off we went, strawberry picking at Waller Family Farms a few miles away.  In the truck, Alexander was excited.  "We did this last year, and the year before and the year before that!"  My mood was lifting by the minute.

It's good we got there as early as we did; the lot for parking, a field hard-trenched with tractor tracks, had already attracted a crowd of families eager to get out and do something on a nice Saturday morning. (Apparently, they heard the same message I did, or else they didn't need to...)  The cheerful greeter pointed us to the next open register, where his mother or aunt noted that we had brought back our baskets from last year.  Joseph wanted eggs, too, so she put a dozen aside, saying "I'll keep these here, because I think we might be running out."

The fields stretched long and wide before us, but most people, for some reason, were farther off.  Alexander went straight to the one he wanted, a few rows in, and began to give me lessons.  "Now, don't pick the ones with holes in them...there might be a bug."  And "look for the big ones!" 

We took parallel rows.  The sun, warming quickly, drew the pungent scent of berries as we plucked them, eating a few along the way. "Leave some for the people coming," Joseph told him, "let's move up a little.  Look!  there are lots more here." 

There was little chance anyone would run out of pickings.  Strawberries were ripening in clumps all along the rows.  Our gallon baskets were quickly filled.  More people, mostly with children, were pouring through, and back at the parking field it looked like a timid version of a free-for-all SUV derby.  We waited for one car to move, blocked by another blocking the exit, and a third not sure what it was doing.  In between people walked, children darted, car doors slammed shut or flew open.

On the way home, we thought of all the things we could make with our gallons of strawberries:  strawberry pie, strawberry shortcake, strawberry muffins, strawberry jam to put in jam thumbprints, strawberry shakes, strawberries with cream, strawberry and pecan salad...

My gallon, by the way, is half empty already, just from nibbling a few at a time over these last days.  Tonight the boys are coming over for dinner...guess what's on the menu for dessert?

A cup of tea, a cup of coffee: a progress report

 Good morning.  My sister Mary Ellen is visiting this week, cheerfully and helpfully living with me in what is basically a reconstruction site.

Here we are working inside on various projects, she with her coffee, I with my tea, while Alexis and his helper saw through roots to dig in the trees around back.

Meanwhile, we await the painter and whoever else shows up...electrician, maybe the plumber, maybe the carpenter, though the last two mentioned their return visits might be later in the week.  It's life around here, always with a full driveway of trucks.

But you will be glad to hear we now have a kitchen sink, faucet, and, best of all, water running!  So far we had mostly been picnicking, washing up whatever isn't disposable in the bathroom sink. The backsplash man, Ben, is on vacation this week, but we can dream...

 Don't feel too sorry for us, though.  On Monday afternoon, my brother Charles and sister-in-law Susan drove up from Cary with my nephew Chet, who has been cooking for me for a few weeks now while all this renovation is going on.

Though he hasn't been a professional cook, his interest in making delicious recipes, finding and trying new foods and spices, has been a great boon for me and Mary Ellen, too.  In fact, when he arrived with his box of this week's specials, the wild mushroom and walnut pate and the beet hummus didn't make it into the frig before crackers came out and people began to dig in.  "Wow!" and "Amazing!" were the sounds between eating.

Both Chet and I are enjoying the adventure of his cooking.  Along with the above treats were roasted cauliflower, a kale, cranberry and nut salad, a delicate white Sable fish with a tahini sauce on the side (we decided the fish was just right without the sauce; the tahini made its own way on the table as a salad dressing or dip), turmeric and carrot rice, and a light cheese flan with carmelized topping that Mary Ellen, Joseph and I were equally possessive of.  Last week, the hit of the menu was butternut squash enchiladas, which, I am almost ashamed to tell you, I did not share with anyone.

But about the house progress:

1) the ceilings are smooth and bright now, and the walls of all the rooms except the kitchen are painted; today, Keith is continuing trimwork.

2) the kitchen countertops, which went in last week, thanks to Josh and his crew, were missing a sink, because, opening the box, we found it cracked...ugh.  Of course, no running water.  (We now know all the things you need a kitchen sink for.)  But as of yesterday afternoon, plumbing is in and only the dishwasher has yet to be further tinkered with.

3) carpentry by the master Chuck has produced beautiful beginnings to a new pantry, a new cabinet with pull-out drawers and a lovely butcherblock top made of the remnants of another job.

4) the porch is almost its old self...rocking chairs usable, extraneous furniture down to a few bookshelves...just in time to enjoy our fine spring weather.

5) a bonus came when the old kitchen counter was removed.  As Daniel and Jose were about to carry it away, it suddenly occurred to me that I could use part of it as a new cabinet top in the living room; I asked, and it was done then and there.  (See photo above:  the glass enclosure to its right, by the way, my brother Charles designed and put in when the first reno took place seven years ago.)

6) outdoors, yard paths are completed, and my next project will be a slightly expanded patio, as soon as  I figure out which material will best support a table and chairs...it isn't gravel and flagstone, I guess, and no concrete, please.

Next, come a lot of small electrical fixes, including a doorbell that, I hope, will work...I'm getting deafer by the day...a new outdoor faucet to water more easily the ever-expanding front garden, the kitchen painted and floor put in, and the porch and landing repainted and stained.

So...so far, so good.  There has been only one day, ironically April 15, when things suddenly began to deconstruct ...that cracked sink, the internet company's interference (for no reason), a major leak requiring no running water at all for a day, and several other snafus.  But the next day we went back to repairing the setbacks and on the progress went.

I'm going out to check on the tree planting now.  My irises are opened, the herb garden is flourishing, and Joseph's lettuce is shouldering up into real leaves.

Be well, all.  Enjoy spring and all its fixings.

A ghost story

 Waking up too early lately, the dark still cushioning me against rising and shining (not to mention getting to work on the house and garden), this morning I lay there waiting for light.  I have been reading The Ghost Variations, 100 very short stories about the way spirits inhabit our world and we theirs.  It's been fun, but at the moment I wasn't in the mood to read, even to pass the time.

There is a quirkiness about the way the author, Kevin Brockmeier, turns the tables on the stereotypical ideas we have of ghost.  No mediums (so far), no white sheets with big Halloween cut-outs for eyes, no knocking on the floor to drive you mad.  Instead, he invents a normalcy that puts spirits and the living in almost interchangeable situations, giving thoughts and feelings and sometimes hilarious perplexities to the non-living (though really, these stories often defy that nomen).  My favorite is the spirit with a terrible sense of direction, lost at every turning and unable to find a single person willing to set her on the right path.

This too-early morning, thinking of the story I had read before sleep last night, I picked up a pen and a few scraps of paper I keep on the night table to jot notes for the next day, and began a ghost story of my own.  I thought I'd share what I've got so far...

It's called...

Time, Gentleman, Time

As if he were a stranger entering a house he's not sure he recognizes, Peter shifts his way from room to room, hugging the wall, mostly.  He's looking for something he can't remember, but knows is there.  That's the way he was his last year...walking around a corner, deliberate and purposeful, his object a sure thing, then suddenly the point of his destination vanished.

When he was finally gone himself, he wondered whether all the things he had forgotten were not entirely erased, but still existed, waiting on some plane he hadn't reached yet.  Finding himself at this place he thought he remembered (even if it was the wrong address), perhaps he could make peace with the insubstantiation of his existence.  The irony of that conundrum wasn't lost on him.

Nothing about the rooms struck him as significant.  There must have been furniture, or pictures on the wall...photographs, even...but such images escaped him.  Toward the back of the house there were voices, so he shifted toward them, though for an instant...he didn't know why...he was tempted to turn down the darkened hall toward the bedroom.

In the dining room now...he seems to know it by instinct...he stops for a moment, then moves into the kitchen.  Here he feels both comfortable and anxious.  His lower extremities begin to ache, but as if from far away, as if he were feeling someone else's. 

The voices are louder from here...he can hear laughter and a small child splashing and giggling.  A man he once might have known, he thinks, is shouting, cheering her on.

Some sharp edge of a memory cuts him...there is a woman with them, her voice...he knows it.  A smell of barbecue on a grill is brought to him by a shift of wind, and close behind it the scent of the cream his mother slathered over him before they walked through the sand down to the water, her hand pulling him little by little toward the low fringe of waves.  She, too, laughs.

Is this where he is, then, way back there again?  No. Not her.  But someone closer.

Closer than he wants to be.  He is too close, he feels, to something he is not ready for.  He stays where he is, in the shadows, watching without really seeing how all this is happening.  

He's new at this state of being, anyone else could tell him; it's confusing, seeing life go on without him.

***********************************************

By the time I wrote this, it was nearly seven, and the day could get on.  Meanwhile, you can have some fun and see what you can make of it, see where the story can go from here.  I've got to go plant some arum lilies.

In Progress

morning reflections

Well, work is getting done!  The downstairs is a mess of old wood exposed, new wood hammered, ceiling scrapes, dangling and redirected electrical wires, furniture piled on porch and under wraps, kitchen things and books tucked into closets.

new furniture for the porch

kitchen opened up

Here is my dining table for the duration:

All the workers I contacted months ago are showing up and doing good, sometimes brilliant, work, ie., the master carpenter and his master electrician friend, who both think in whole-picture perspectives, and the painter who actually knows how paint is made, changes over time, and shows on different planes. 

Keith explaining the science of paint

Painting will begin in the living room with my firm and firmly final decision, Benjamin Moore's "Persimmon".  I'd tried the Sherwin Williams variety of that color first, but it reminded me of the salmon loaf they served me two hours after Joseph's birth (what is it about the choices hospital dieticians make?). I found the bedrooms-baths color, too, "White Rain", a gentle hint of blue-gray.  For months, I had hemmed and hawed over whether they would match each other, until the other day, making up the bed with the new coverlet I had sewn back on stay-in winter nights, I looked down and saw them happily coexisting in the fabric. Ah.

Since my last renovation seven years ago (I call it Part I of III), when my brother and nephew did most of the redoing, I hadn't collected the necessary roster of experts, and all my relatives who can do such things are now busy redoing their own places.

But a friend recommended the carpenter,  Chuck, who had done a superb job on his bookcases and cabinets, as I saw for myself.  When Chuck came to look over what needed to be done, he nodded sagely at my long list and said he could do most of that. That was over a month ago, before I could move back in, but he put me on his schedule and showed up the first day as I was unloading boxes and bags from my car.

Since then, he's been keeping me apprised of every turn and change, to which I inevitably reply,  Go to it. He brought in his painter, Keith, a friend of his from childhood, who reminisced with him about skateboarding down our hill.  Though Keith groaned at the idea, he  scraped all my ceilings, agreeing they needed it.  Just expect surprises, Keith counseled (sure enough, he was right...as I write, I can hear him struggling with one).  Chuck also called in another friend, electrician Joe, who cut a swath from his overloaded schedule so that the work on the pocket door to the bathroom wouldn't be held up.  (Certain people get priority, he nodded to me; I was glad to be, at least indirectly, on the receiving end of that association). 

Missing my brother Charles, I had searched online for a tile installer and found one whose written reviews included two people I knew.  Ben turned out to be a young fellow with a new baby who, for safety, asked that the house be clean and clear before he came to measure and advise, and who in turn recommended his friend, five-star stone-installer, Josh, who guided me through a bewildering collection of options for countertops.  Josh then sent his plumber, Mr. Ivy, who came when called and now I don't have to brush my teeth in the shower anymore.  Professional nepotism?  Maybe, but it works for me.

The best part is watching and listening as I traverse ever-changing paths through the rooms; they labor and talk and sing comfortably around each other...I find it a cheerful and cheering scene, knowing that, like art, all the mess is creating a new life for the house.

Yesterday so many people showed up...carpenter, painter, plumber, dishwasher deliverer, and electrician...that I decided to get out of their way and continue work on a new gravel-flagstone path in among the ivy tangles behind the house. 

Later this week, two helpers will show up to plant a few new trees in the back yard.  The ground is too contemptuous for me to dig, composed entirely of clay entwined with large tree roots and embedded in rocks the size of stairsteps...in fact, that's what Joseph dug up in the front yard to build two sets of stairs on the slope.

stepping stones, or what I'm grounded on

And speaking of the front slope, I'd best get out there and water the garden.  We have had much rain in recent weeks, but suddenly this week everything is bone dry.  So I am off to the garden center to pick up extra hose and attachments.

That's what we have been up to here...how about you?

 

 

Mulch

 

What have I been doing all this time?  You may wonder...and so may I.  Packing to move?  Not yet.  Fixing up the house to get back into?  Not yet.  Joseph has been working hard at his end of the move, so, while the engine of my anticipation is racing, I am exercising it outdoors.  Besides taking great pleasure in this season's gorgeous crop of daffodils, I'm planning new gardens, cleaning up the yard (Alexander and Louis' battalion having been deployed to the camp next door), ordering plants for a back border, and mulching. 

invading fort...

...newly deployed

Last summer and fall, Joseph spent months turning my problematic slope into a beautifully designed rock garden.  He and Alexander dug up the rocks themselves (I probably told you about it then) and Joseph placed them and planted around them parcel by parcel. 

Joseph's rock garden last fall

But the last two months' rains have washed our native orange clay to the surface, making for slippery, uneven slopes here and there.  Perfect for building army forts, and camouflaging against the enemy, but not much for growing.  So, once I had a clear field, it was time to replenish, lay down nourishment and comfort, and hold down my ground.

Meanwhile, I hadn't noticed how the pandemic enclosures this last year had rendered me so inactive, physically.  I walk outdoors almost every day, of course, 40 minutes at least, often an hour, but being in a small apartment and leaving the gardening at the house to (the more talented, frankly) Joseph, I wondered whether my body would be up to the task of hauling and digging and spreading mulch as I had done in years past.  Creaks and groans in knees, a disfigured hand...what did that say about a change of life force...was it time to let someone else do it?

What erased that question was the estimate I received from a well-recommended garden helper.  I won't shock you with the exact figure, but I figured that doing it myself would save enough for three new kitchen appliances...and not small ones, either.  So I got on the phone to Brockwell's and ordered a truckload to be delivered.  There was no longer any question whether I'd once more pick up shovel and rake and get to work myself.  

The nice office manager at Brockwell's made sure I was buying enough to justify the delivery charge (a drop in the bucket), but delivery was better than borrowing someone's pickup and going back twice for more.  To avoid delays, she advised me to get on their waitlist. "That way the driver can just call you when he finds extra time between deliveries, and even if you are not home, you can put a bucket to mark where you want it dumped and leave a check under the mat."

To my amazement, the load showed up the same afternoon.  A generous three yards of double shredded hardwood piled nearly as high as the window sills was mine to work with.  And work I did.  Over three days, at 2-3 hours at a time, I stuck pitchfork after pitchfork into the steaming hulk, loaded wheelbarrowfuls to truck to the far and near corners of the front yard, first raking mounds of leaves out of their nests in shrubbery and rock borders.

Frankly, the effort...my effort...amazed me. Initially, I reckoned that I'd be able to work an hour or so til my heretofore crumbling body complained, but miraculously it had sprung into Spring mode...it didn't make a peep. 

 In a few hours the whole lower slope was finished.  From the first dig into that pile, I recognized the familiar strength real physical work draws out.  When later I returned to the apartment I was sure I'd need a good dose of ibuprophen, or something stronger, before bedtime, but all I really felt was exhilaration.  I was tired, but in the way one feels after a bracing game or run (don't be fooled:  I haven't run in at least four decades, but you understand the analogy, I'm sure).  I couldn't wait for the next day to begin again.

center front, spring, mulched

Though day one had been a balmy 70 degrees F, day two was cloudy, considerably cooler and dampening with the mist of a small rain.  No problem for me:  over a few hours the mulch pile diminished even further.

lesser celandine

My prolific gardening neighbor Laurie Thorp had dug me up some of her lesser celandine, which, though invasive enough to cover a whole yard in no time, would at least anchor the steepest, most resistent part of the slope.  I planted those right away while the air was wet.  Neighbor after neighbor stopped by to cheer me on (a few wondered where the soldiers had gone).  Yesterday morning, day three, colder still and bracing, I headed back to do what was left.  After the day's dig and spread, I walked around that slope, picking up last leaves, raking here and there, happy (as I hope the garden will be) not only at the way it looked, but at the way I felt...lifted and cleansed of old infirmities.

back mess of ivy

Now it's time to get to the back yard, where acres of ivy complicate everything.  On Monday, one of the university boys will come to help me tackle the mess and ready the ground for the new trees that arrive on Tuesday; my hands, while they can lift, haul, carry, rake and plant, can't dig large wells well. On Wednesday, plant; on Thursday, who knows what I will turn to?  Oh, right...bluestone pebbles down for a path to a small flagstone patio (I'd better get an order in for those).  

I'm up for anything these days, thanks in no small part to the effort called forth by Spring.

Here, though, is the highlight of our move so far:  last night, on the other side of the driveway, we celebrated Joseph, born into daffodil season all those years ago, just before the first day of Spring, with a birthday dinner in his new kitchen.  Though he's not moved in yet, we sat enjoying the space and admiring the view out the windows, blessing candles, bread, and being together.  

Spring has always been for me a resurgence of body and spirit...and new life.  

This year it radiates inside and out.