Today is for Real

A few chicks chirp in the basement.  Darla, a convalescing kid, baahs from the den.  Four flats of tomato and green pepper seedlings snuggle in the dining room, protected from the last frost predicted for the next 10 days.  The usual Boxers Lex and Rosie, and Yogi, our African Gray, doze elsewhere on the first floor.  That's pretty much it for springtime in the farmhouse, not counting 2 humans and a temporarily still collection of stink, elder and lady bugs. 

After planning for several weeks off, this smug gardener spent most of this week inside, having last Friday downloaded an unexpected 330 pages of regulatory gobbledygook from the Federal Reserve. Smug, because his spring garden is almost complete and nicely thriving.  Every morning my cup and I wander around to spot what's new.  All of this would be almost impossible if I had to rush to an 8-6 job.  I'm thankful for the flexibility and glad to be done with the gobbledygook.

Of course, work waits to be done.  I sweated 4 hours last weekend to coat a corner of the field garden with cardboard, newspapers and a few inches of top soil, quite pleased with myself until I looked out my second story office window.  Through binoculars, all that effort looks like a postage stamp.

"Bit by bit," says Virginia.  "That's how anything worth doing gets done."

She's right.  I'll stick with it.  Two months from now, with skill and bit of luck, that postage stamp will have turned into 10,000 square feet ready for planting corn, pumpkins, squash and grains for the animals and hopefully not the deer and groundhogs that tend to chew masterpieces into disappointment. 

The almost empty greenhouse waits for ideas, a syllabus for a fall class deserves attention, and....

"Tomorrow," says Virginia.  "Some things can wait for tomorrow." 

Yeh, I think I'll go see if any more chicks are hatching.