Sunday, April 19, 2009

Blossoms, seedlings, and a morning on my own

Do you remember these buds?


Well now they look like this:


Spring. There's nothing like it.



Even the rain smells good at this time of year. To me it smells of freshly turned earth, of green shoots, of damp flowers. For the past two days it has rained, and, while I can't easily go out walking with the children in it, I've enjoyed looking out my windows at the raindrops, and breathing deeply when I step out on my porch for a moment.

Speaking of my porch, here's my garden, which the children and I have now moved outside. (It was quite the parade, pushing them through the house, stopping when Lavella threw a fit because I wasn't "letting" her push the super-heavy pot-that-weighs-more-than-she-does by herself...yeah.)


I didn't harden them off properly, since...well, I sort of forgot them outside that first day of "hardening", and then just ended up never bringing them back in. This is why I've always had a "black thumb" with plants. But anyway, these seem to be pretty hardy seedlings, and are still alive.

It'll be interesting to see if they survive. I hope so! If not, I'm sure I can replace most of them with similar varieties from the nearby plant nursery, but there's something satisfying about starting them from seed myself. Kind of like washing a fleece and taking a project from there. We'll see what happens.

Today the sun came out to shine again. I got a babysitter for the children this morning, put on my Gucci sunglasses, and got into my tiny blue car. No carseats to buckle, no snacks to hand out. I felt like I was missing a limb. Pedal-to-the-metal, I nudged the car up just a bit past my usual 85-miles-per-hour comfort zone. It was weird. I was free.

All I really had to do was go grocery shopping, and it felt like a true luxury to do it alone. I stopped for lunch: a slice of plain cheese pizza and some scary looking buffalo wings at the BX food court. Nasty, but I couldn't even care. I got the food to go and ate it in my car while looking at magazines. Then I knit a little bit. AND NO ONE BOTHERED ME. It was amazing. But then I started missing those little faces (you know, the ones that might possibly Bother Me), and then... I went back home.

Seriously. I think they get cuter every time I look at them.


And of course they're extra cute when I haven't seen them in a little while.

It was refreshing to have just a brief break.


Jonah, visiting with the neighbors

It'll be good to have Greg home with us again.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your skipping out on your own reminds me of what happened to Theresa Boyer last week. (Theresa is Greg's cousin and she and Pat have five children).

Asher wanted to spray paint the name "Jesus" on a homemade cross and place it out by the road in celebration of Easter. Before they got started, Judah got stung by a bee. So she took him inside to take care of it. Then Emma and Abbey came inside with silver paint all over their hands. Emma had spray painted the basketball silver and Abbey helped. So Theresa cleaned the paint off their hands. A little while later Abbey and Daisy came in with cuts on their hands that needed to be tended. In the meantime, Asher had used the silver spray paint and told Theresa to come and see how pretty the porch looked!

I don't know if Jesus' name ever got painted on the cross, but I'm sure she felt like saying, "Enough, devil, in the name of Jesus!" When Pat got home, she took off by herself to go shopping.

Jill

Sarah said...

Isn't it crazy... how you feel so excited to be alone and then suddenly (an hour to ten days later, depending on your kids, j/k) you feel exactly like a part of your anatomy is missing- my freakiness is definitely the moment I realize the carseat is empty because the carseat is never empty. Anyways, I'm glad you have a babysitter to help maintain your sanity!

a.susie said...

GORGEOUS photos! Great post.