Is it summer yet? It felt like summer this weekend, and when I look out into the back yard it looks like summer. The trees, which were formerly covered in buds, are now full of full-on blossoms and leaves. This one is my favourite. Its an apple tree that stands out so beautifully among the hemlocks and pines. Like a pretty girl in a party dress.
And the blossems came on so suddenly. One day they were tightly close pinkish buds and the next day BAM a tree full of snowy flowers. I'm sorry I don't have better pictures, but I was trying to quickly snap a few in the last few minutes of nap time, and I just shot from the balcony instead of trying to get down closer to it, and maybe even hauling out a ladder. But the best thing about this tree couldn't even be captured on film. Its the sound that this tree makes. Or rather, the sound around this tree. It was literally buzzing with bees. Big fat bumbling bumblebees were hovering all around it. It was so great to sit there and just listen to spring happening.
And another sign of spring; we are gardening. Or rather, we are trying to garden. I may have mentioned before that the roadway in front of our house is being expanded into a four lane highway. And as a result of the expropriation of a large portion of our front yard, we've lost a lot of our garden. So Hubs' big plan is to dig up some of the lawn adjacent to the garden and expand it that way. Its as good and idea as any, as there is a lot of yard here, and resultantly a lot of mowing. Might as well put some of that lawn to good use, and get it to grow us some food.
I say that all very optimistically, though hind-sight should tell me we are not very good at this. But hey, the only way to get better at something is to practice, right? So that's how I'm going to put it from now on, we are practice gardeners.
And as you can see, we have lots of help. With such able-bodied and enthusiastic assistance as this, how can we fail? Really, he's the most persistent of all of us. Hubs and I are ready to pack it in after an afternoon of digging up turf and pulling weeds, but this kid would stay at it until it was dark.
Seriously, he never seems to get tired of it. It makes me think of a friend of mine, who's little girl loved being read to so much, that one day she said to herself "alright, I'm going to read stories to her until she gets bored of it and tells me to stop." And you know what, she couldn't outlast her daughter. The little girl sat and let herself be read to until she fell asleep! And I think the Little Dude would be the same way with digging in the dirt. One of these days, when I have an extra pair of hands around to watch the baby I'm going to try the same thing with L.D. We'll head outside after breakfast, and I will let him dig and dig and rake and shovel until he tells me he wants to go inside. I wonder how long it would take? Or if he would just go until he fell asleep too. Probably.
His second favourite thing these days (after gardening tools) is worms. Really bugs and creepy crawlies of any kind. I was getting the Baby ready for bed the other day, sitting in the darkened room in the rocking chair with him in my arms, when the Little Dude busted in, and ran towards me with his hand held out to me. Without even thinking I held out my hand to receive whatever he was giving me. "Ssshhhh," I told him, "the baby is falling asleep." Obediently he dropped his voice to a whisper and put something in my hand. "I found a millipede!" he said, and turned and ran back out the room, at which point I tossed that creepy little bug as far away from me as I could. Eyuch!
Of course, whenever we dig in the dirt, we are bound to find worms and such, and it is always with great cries of exaltation that I am informed of his discovery of another worm. Today he came running towards me with a whole mitt full of them, and as usual, wanted me to take them from him. But you know, I'm not such a huge fan of holding worms. I try to be cool about it; nature is great and they are all God's creatures, yada, yada, yada, but today I just was not in the mood to hold a whole handful of worms. So I politely told him, no thanks. "Hold dem!" he insisted. I held my ground. At which point he got very frustrated, so I came up with the idea of a critter bucket. That way we have a place to put our worms and revisit them as necessary, but I don't have to hold and babysit them myself. Also, the worms are more likely to survive playtime. I'm not a big fan of holding them in my hands, but at the same time I don't like to see them get mangled by my exuberant toddler.
Oh, and there are spiders everywhere! Inside, outside, really I've never seen so many spiders. They say that statistically you swallow 8 spiders during the night over the course of your entire life (don't ask me how they know or calculate that) but I'll bet I've ingested half my quota this spring alone. Unlike worms, spiders don't gross me out at all. Look at this lovely spider-lady who went running away from our rakes and shovels, carrying her big bag of eggs with her. Very cool. I made sure that she got safely on her way. As I always tell L.D. spiders are our friends. They eat the bugs that would eat our garden. I guess worms are our friends too, but they are just friends I don't want to hold in my hands.
you saw CHARLOTTE!
Posted by: brooklyn_codger | 05/25/2011 at 01:34 PM
Totally! That is totally what I was thinking when she scurried away. What work will she write in her web today?
Posted by: finger thumb | 05/26/2011 at 12:22 AM