Livin' the dream

Summer, like your child’s infancy, has the uncanny ability to go by too quickly and too slowly at the same time.  Long lazy days of swimming and building a mini golf course in your yard and agonizing over deadlines all blend into one another and then, bam- the peas have gone by, when you barely even noticed they were ready.

Ick.

That’s not entirely true.  I knew they were starting to be ready, but I was very carefully choosing only the juiciest, most rotund and ready of the bunch, as my dear husband has a little… thing about the proper time to pick snap peas.  But then I turned around and the plants were drying out, the peas ready to burst with sweet plumpness. 

This seems to happen a lot in my life. I spend so much time planting seeds (metaphorically and literally) and then tending, acticipating, and eventually kind of… forgetting?  I don’t know why.  Maybe all my dreaming and expectation has built whatever I’m waiting for up to such a degree that reality can’t possibly live up to my imagination, so I accidentally-on-purpose allow things slip my mind. 

Or maybe I’m just really lazy.

But not this year.

This year, I am determined not to miss anything.  I did too much of that last year, during the summer of long-handled shoe horns, anti-coagulants, and endless physical therapy.  So I marched myself, both kids, and the dog down to the garden and got a-pickin’. 

One kid did more bike riding than picking.

And the other kid did more feeding the dog than picking. 

But it was nice to have company.  You know, aside from the bugs in my tea.  

It's far from the idyllic scene of cooperative family farming I have in my head. But I'm starting to accept "good enough" family farming - everyone together, outside, and committed to the task at hand. When I am able to give up a tiny bit of control over what everyone else's chosen task is, things tend to go more smoothly.  And even if people whine and complain, and call each other names, and the dog runs away and I am crushed under the weight of having to do all this goddamned work all by myself, there will always be the reward of the harvest.  And the pretty pictures it inspires.

A less than perfect day

Shit is going down around here. I don't really want to talk about it. Except to say that I know it's all going to be okay. And that some days, you have to take your kids to play mini-golf. And let them get ice cream. And buy them new baseball cleats. Because you love them. And life is fucking short.
And then you can come home and admire your glorious forsythia.


Please excuse the weird focusing, it was very windy today.

And then listen to what Roosty has to say today. He's very wise, you know.

So true, Roosty. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Significance

The pinkletinks have returned.

Go ahead and turn your sound all the way up to hear their lovely chorus. Oh how I adore them. How my heart just fills with joy and I am swept away in waves of relief when I hear them. "I made it!" My sunlight-deprived soul cheers from under layers of fleece and under armor. Winter really is drawing to a close. The days get longer. The icy wind loses its bite. Seeds and meat birds are ordered. Gardens are tilled. Bikes are set free from their cobwebbed prison in the basement.

And we humans are freed from a winter's worth of navel-gazing. There is nothing like 4 solid months of staring at the same four walls, the same familiar faces, to magnify one's own stresses and problems, and distort them in fun house mirror fashion. (Though I may very well be as fat as I appear in the mirror. Holy crap, can my husband cook.)

This year feels particularly more stressful, for a variety of reasons. Things are changing. Things are unknown. But aren't they always? Didn't I feel this stressed last year? It's so hard to remember. But when I stand next to the newly tilled garden, listening to my peeping frog friends, and staring up at Orion, poised self-importantly in the night sky, I feel so wonderfully insignificant. So small. Such a tiny little part of this complex and giant universe, that functions beautifully regardless of my itty bitty existence.

And I think of the pinkletinks, who - so immersed in their own froggy existence, what with all the awakening and peeping and procreation at hand- have no awareness of us humans. Nor could they ever conceive of how much we look forward to their return from the murky depths each spring. How significant they are in my own feelings of insignificance.

Hipstamatic prequel

Don't get all excited about the green-ness. This walked happened a hundred years ago. Or in October.

I guess it's less of photo essay, and more just random pictures I took on a dog walk one day. But I don't really care, cause this is MY blog, damnit. I can do what I want.

Hipstamatic dog walk

I have only two things to say:

1. Is it my imagination, or it is getting greener out there?

2. Dogwin rolled in what (judging by the smell) must be skunk diarrhea this morning. Oh. My. God.

Ohmigod.

Okay, enough gabbing. Let's let the pictures tell the story, shall we?

My hand is better, by the way

Yup, hand is all better now.

And so much has changed, that it isn't really worth going into. Because, even though the kids get bigger and braver and sweeter, and the earth and the air and the water get colder, the important thing is that we are all still here.

Waiting for Spring to come.

...and then I stuck my hand in the middle of a dog fight.

So I've been gone for a while, eh? Yeah, well... I stuck my hand in the middle of a dog fight.


Gross, huh? It got worse.

But I had lots of help.

It's hard to tie your shoes one-handed.
We managed to squeeze in a little more summer fun, though. We ran around the docks with our friends.

Hunter learned to fly.
Just one of your average ordinary Vineyard summers.