Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Early Planting

Every once in a while there is a perfect day.
One where you enjoy nearly every minute, when you feel aware of good things happening, when the ones you love are with you.  When you've worked hard together, played together, talked together, eaten together.
Yesterday was just such a day.

In the morning we did school in the sunshine:
Read our scripture chapter, worked on journaling, played a game of Memory together, worked with Little Miss on her alphabet, phonics workbooks, simple addition and subtraction with Easter candy, reading (covering -uck, -ick, -eck, -ack, -ock, sight words, and then each reading a whole book on their own to me).
Afterward: out into the sunshine.

It was over 70 degrees and delightful.
Every year as I put the early seeds in, I feel a bit anxious.  It almost feels like I'm scattering seeds and just hoping they are going to come up. 

It always feel precarious to me.
(Beets going into the ground)

I wait, anxiously, to see green coming through the ground in a week or so, evidence that something turned out right.
Yesterday I busied myself planting onions as they joyfully romped around the yard, excited by my turning on the sprinkler.
Soon I was hauling out swimsuits and watching them as they ran, the boys with purpose, and the Little Miss more cautiously.  I laid onions out in a row, listening to them giggle and be proud of how high the water was when they went through.
Popsicles and potatoes.
I had little assistants for the potato planting.
They wanted to stick pieces of the potatoes into the ground.
Afterward, we marked each of the potato mounds and I told Isaiah he could get the watering can. He happily went to work.
 (Our popsicle stick markers)

We pulled a large beetle out of the soil for the start of our insect collection: Black with metallic purple on the edges of his body.

 (Peas, beets, salad and green smoothie material)

I had brought out shovels and a hoe for the planting process; they brought out the garden rake, too.
They dug in the dirt, burying each other's legs, generally getting filthy.
The tractors were pulled out.

We went into the front yard and my bleeding hearts took my breath away.
Delicate and beautiful and thriving (that last part makes me happy).
We pruned back the hydrangea.
Cleaned up.

At the end of day we ate together and then read together on the couch.
Little Miss fell asleep, curled up there on the end.
When I went to put her in bed, tho, she woke up -- and ended up keeping me company well into the evening -- long after she should have been asleep.
She followed me as I cleaned and made banana chocolate-chip muffins, talking my ears off, sampling batter, telling me words that rhyme.

It was one of those days that leaves you feeling satisfied, having worked and played and loved and lived and thrived in the most essential and personal and important relationships:
simple pleasures, family, life-sustaining work, and God.

Last evening as I was cleaning up my house at the end of day and testing out the sprinklers -- hearing them tick-tick-tick in the front yard and watching evening light spill eastward, bathing my yard and the mountains in that beautiful golden color -- I came back in the back gate and looked in the cup, watching the beetle attempt a way out.

I'm pretty excited for the fresh vegetables to come.
And I love that my children are learning this process.
Learning to work in the dirt, tend the land, witness the fruit that comes from labor.
 *I so love that his shirt is off (his request) and his little buns are almost hanging out.*

Mud feels good in the fingertips; the earth smells good.
It's as if my spirit knows this is worthwhile and beautiful.
And when my back aches when it's over, I know it was time well spent.

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