The first video that was entirely the Girl's idea.
around the house
Wants and Needs
Wants and needs are easily confused. Birds, for example, need water like all creatures. They don’t need berries, but their sweet flavor and high water content makes berries particularly attractive. Our recently-installed netting, however, frustrates our flying friends from fulfilling both wants and needs (though it does little for alliterative flourishes).
Flowers need attention, as do little girls (and, I would imagine, little boys, though we won’t be collecting anecdotal evidence for a few more weeks yet). And the best attention is often so seemingly slight: a pat, a hug, a kind word.
Spring Work
Spring is a time of expectation and rebirth. Or simply birth. With four weeks remaining until the Boy's due date, it's time to complete the final preparations: clothes need washing, cribs need assembling,
and final days as an only child need enjoying. We're all bursting at the prospect of a new member of the family, but I suspect that it won't take long for the Girl to start remembering how peaceful a Saturday afternoon could be when she was flying solo.
But there will be things only she can help with for several more years: her place as the special helper is secure for the foreseeable future.
So is mine.
Parsley
Growing one’s own herbs — if only we had the time to use them…
Inviting In, Keeping Out
It's not something we experience daily: we're often on our way or long gone when the sun shines through the kitchen/dining room window like this. That makes weekend light unique: we know it's a day off when we tumble downstairs to see something like this.
We invite it in, making sure all the blinds are open and even turning off a few lights to enjoy the warmth of early morning spring light.
We aren't the only ones glad to see the spring light.
The raspberry and blackberry canes are bursting with excitement, literally.
And so while some spring guests are welcome, others aren't: last year, birds ate every single berry long before they were even ripe. This year, we've put up netting -- a polite "Keep Out" that has me curious about its ultimate effectiveness.
Blossoms and Satan
Our lone rose is blooming.
And with our holly cut back, it's easy to see why the sweet gum that continually plagued me was so difficult impossible to kill, other than it being a sweet gum tree.
It wraps itself around all that's good and perverts it to its own nefarious ends. Sounds familiar...
Flowers for the Morning
"I promised her!" K mouths to me as L thumps up the stairs to brush her teeth, disheartened by my casual dismissal of her idea to go down to the blooming azalea and pick some flowers to take to school. "You can just get some from our neighbors' azalea in their front yard," I said just moments earlier. They're out of town, but I knew they wouldn't mind: they're like long-lost family to the Girl.
"I'm not tromping down through the cold, wet leaves and grass to pick blooms for her when she can walk fifty feet..."
A few minutes later, I'm pulling small clumps of blooms from the bush, excited about the foggy early morning that promises a sunny mid-morning.
An hour later, the prophecy is fulfilled.
On Hiding and Emerging
Our two hostas (Fortunei Albopicta) winter under decaying leaves and an ever-dwindling smattering of decorative rocks. After the new leaves of most all trees have fully unfurled and the crape myrtles have begun budding, the hostas finally begin to emerge from winter dormancy.
It’s almost magical to watch such perennials resurrect themselves every spring. Little buds emerge from even the dampest, thickest blanket of last autumn’s leaves — the strength to push stones and leaves away is a testament to life’s tendency to conquer death.
Then again, maybe it just likes to hide.
After all, who doesn’t like hiding?
Spring Break?
The first day of spring break 2012 proper, and it starts like any spring day should: sun, warmth, clear light. Freshly emerged leaves offset the patch of Azalea blue (or is that purple? I've never checked, i.e., asked K) in the back corner. It would be great to be out in the warmth, to do some work on our small raised-bed garden, to work up the first sweat of the year. The grass needs mowing; autumn's leaves need raking; the raspberries need netting shortly -- yet none of these are options.
With a major paper due in a week, I'm sequestered, reading through articles, planning an attack, drowning in coffee and tea.
I spend the day filling a folder with articles from JSTOR, Gale, and seemingly countless other online resources that make it possible to research most anything from home. Then I write, write, write.
"In calling these stories 'parabolic,' we encounter an critical etymological parallel with geometry."
Did I really just write that?
Still, I take my own advice, the mantra to my students that I seem to chant daily: "It's a first draft. Don't worry about making everything perfect -- or even close to it -- in a first draft."
Evening approaches and with it, new tasks. I help the Girl get ready for bed; I trim tenderloin and prepare the brine for smoking later this week. K reads the Girl stories and prepares a salad for tomorrow's lunch. Having to go to work tomorrow, she trundles off to bed; I sit down once more at the computer.
Others I'm sure are enjoying a first evening at the beach or the sounds of crickets at a mountain retreat. Me, I'm just ready to turn out the lights and head to bed.
In the Background
Buds out of the focal plane will soon become the center of all attention — especially birds.
