Spring is Here!!

Did you know that you can burn up to 300 calories in just a half hour of vigorous gardening? That would include raking, digging, carrying, squatting,weeding,planting and lifting,etc. I'm sure you could help me add more. I thought that I could keep up with my blog once good weather came but I missed writing last Sunday because I was gardening. I can't stay inside and my housework has suffered miserably but I try not to look at it. I also don't want to prepare meals when I am outside. I just want to stay outside. Sounds like spring fever? Well, it is. There is so much to do and so little time to do it. My window of opportunity is small. There are many things that I can do in late spring, and early summer and summer but spring is here and I must be outside. There are plants to be divided such as day lillies and hostas. You can divide them later on but it is much harder to do and to keep them alive and kicking! We spent the biggest part of our day today, cleaning up our hill, getting rid of overgrowth, weeds and plants that were just not doing well. I am so fortunate that my husband loves to garden as much as I do. We vow, each time, to keep one another on task, for walking to one spot to another to retrieve a shovel or a rake is hazardous to our project. It takes one weed, one rock out of place and it's another twenty minutes before you bring the rake back. Oh well, spontaneity is part of what draws me to gardening. Happy spring everyone, hope you are enjoying it as much as I am! Gotta go back outside!

The night began and ended in a soft snowfall which covered and coated each twig, branch and stalk of grass. I awoke to a world swaddled in a quilt of snow and couldn't stop looking. Taking the camera I stepped out onto the deck to take photos of this overnight miracle. The past Friday, with temperatures in the seventies, I was huddled in a room wodering if that afternoon would be my last while the storm raged outside. Hail pelted the windows and a lull, in the storn, so slow and silent left us guessing about what would happen next. We were spared that day but Henryville, Indiana and Maryvile Indiana were not. As I drove to work, three days later, taking in the incrediable beauty and feeling such gratitude to live in such a beautiful place I was also filled with sorrow for families who lost homes, businesses and worst of all, loved ones. How can a day be so bad and yet be so beautiful? There are no guaranties in nature or life but to live each day to the fullest. And to not let a momemt pass to tell someone that they are loved and appreciated. To not let a day pass that I don't see what is outside my window and bless the nature that God has given me to enjoy. Spring will come, the grass will grow so green it will hurt my eyes. Birds will build nests and raise their young. I will plant my tomatoes, sage, and zinnias. Hostas will be divided and transplanted. Great quanities of earth will be moved on the Starr acerage, God willing, I have that chance and those opportunites to watch my grandchildren run in the back field and listen to my children laughing around the table as we always do when we are together. Spring will come as it always does, in sorrow and in joy. The spring peepers will announce a new season, as they always do. I hope to have more seasons to enjoy it all and take each evening walk with my husband to soak in the beauty and talk of unimportant things because it is in the commoness of each day that I find my humanity.
God bless those folks, in southern Indiana and elsewhere, who have lost loved ones and great and little pieces of their lives.