A Song of Spring

This weekend was a song for spring. It began with the girls' spring concert Friday night. Here is Hels walking up to the church for the performance. The capstone of the evening was Vivaldi's Spring. It was truly glorious--the best children's concert I have ever heard--and I left so grateful for the musical education my girls are having. The girls were so proud.


Since I was a child, Mother's day has always been about the garden. We always gave my Mother a big hanging plant. My weekend was filled with thoughtful garden gifts from my family. Lou brought me a refreshing strawberry/mint drink in a champagne flute as I weeded my perennial garden.


Nels dug up a new garden bed and placed this stone at the end. We then headed off to a beautiful little farm in a deep valley that sold $3 perennials--all divided from her very old garden beds. We got forsythia, strawberries, and some other beauties.

I had been wanting to create a shade garden in a corner of our house. Hels helped me transplant ferns, solomon's seal, violets, and lilies of the valley. I hope some of it lives--the ferns are looking a little shocked.


Dinner included fiddleheads (which the girls doused with hollandaise). I like this little bit of ephemeral food--we talked about other little ephemeral spring creatures we had seen and heard throughout the day including the peepers, a little snail leaving a silver streak across the drive, and the red-spotted newt who I discovered deep in the earth.

From Vivaldi to new gardens to ephemerals in the woods. This weekend was more than a song of spring--it was an orchestral suite.

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April showers bring ...

...summer dreams!

On Saturday, I brought my tea and garden journal to the dining table for some thinking and planning.

We spent last summer getting dirt hauled in for grass and compost prepared for gardens. Now I get to garden! It has been fun to think about what I'd like to do where.

Before we sold our house....4 years ago now....I stashed my favorite plants in a friend's garden. They've done well, and I look forward to bringing them home.

Within moments of my sitting down, the girls joined me. Lou poured through her plethora of journals and had fun looking at all the things she collected from last summer.

Hels got more ambitious and pulled out a bookbinding kit to make a journal for a friend's birthday.



It was a delightful morning of summer dreams.

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A Cup of Sugar

What do you do when you run out of sugar while baking? Do you hop in your car and run to the store for sugar or do you stop over at your neighbors and borrow a cup?

I've just read an article in the New York Times magazine by Michael Pollan that looks at a few good reasons to go green. In the article he talks about the impact of cheap energy on community. "Cheap energy" he says, "allows us to leapfrog community by making it possible to sell our specialty over great distances as well as summon into our lives the specialties of distant others".

This has made me think about our neighborhood. We have a great little community--there are four families with children at our school as well as a couple of lovely retired couples. We gather for the occasional bonfire or cookout, we sometimes borrow a cup of sugar and reciprocate later with a sample of what we've baked, but we aren't actively engaged in each other's lives. How can we make some changes through being more green?

The first is we could begin carpooling! One mother likes to get to school early. I like to be on time and visit with other parents. Another neighbor is always late and then heads to the gym. If we carpooled, the children would spend a bit more time together (which would really help some fragile friendships) and the Moms would interact (with my last carpool, we had a daily after-school tea--so good).


The second is that we could expand our gardens. Too much zucchini makes for lovely neighbor interactions. At our last house, our neighbor had a huge garden. She left extra veggies on the stonewall and she had a huge harvest dinner each year. Some evenings we would wander over at dinnertime for a tomato or zucchini when we were bereft of veggies.

So, for Earth Day today, I will be calling my neighbors to discuss carpooling. The era of cheap energy is ending and it is time to pool our resources. I will also, finally, go get that compost container and start to plan a garden expansion. I can't wait to leave a few big zucchinis in certain mailboxes!

Next time you run out of sugar or need some exotic spice for your evening dinner, why don't you ask a neighbor?

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