~:: Signs of Spring ::~

Woo-hoo, hoypoloy and sis-boombaa – how I love words.  Love them, love them, love them.  I love the delicate scents and shapes and colors of them.  The feel of them in my hand.  I’d throw myself into a pit of them if MacDonald’s had one deep enough to hold them all.  And then throw fountains of the things up in the air over my head to fly like confetti.

This morning I am feeling like telling Wabi and Jenni and Dawn and Jeanene and Julie and Donna and Linde and Linda thank you, thank you for making friends with me and caring about my family and talking and talking and sharing your lives with a perfect stranger.  And Sharon – you know how long it’s been?  Like fifteen years.  FIFTEEN freaking years (if not more) since we started slapping each other on the shoulder from half a continent away.  And Cori – what a priviledge to know you, but what a blessing to have this medium in which to come to love you.  And to my face-to-face, shoulder-to-shoulder, heart to heart driving distance (except for you Kev and Dad)  friends and family, I throw you up in the air like confetti too!

None of you know, I think, how much it fuels my soul when you leave a word after I batter you with my own – it just makes my day, sends whistling out my ears, raises my eyes to the mountain.  What kindness and service, to answer the voice of one who so often sits in the wilderness with a sad sack on her head.

I think I am happy today.  And I don’t know why.  Maybe because I planted seeds of grass in the pasture, even if it’s too early. Maybe because the field is finally dragged, and I had fun doing it – and the surface is so soft and nice now.  Maybe because the corporate taxes are due tomorrow, and then I will NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THEM AGAIN, till next year.  Maybe because I’m close to finishing the last half of the last album for this year’s photo transcription.

Maybe spring is in the air, or my liver cleaned itself out of all the middle aged drudge or I haven’t looked in a mirror yet today or the classmates’ reunion site sent me a teaser, showing me pages from on of my high school’s yearbook that I’d never yet seen.  I know it’s because of an hours long dream full of fantastical ideas and non-threatening adventure, rife with details and wonders and very fun characters.  How often does THAT happen?

I will justify this with a few pictures, a short essay entitled: First Signs of Spring that I will stick on Wabi’s Farm Friday thing.

A lone flake of hay, still lying in the pasture where G threw it by mistake, forgetting that the horses are now locked out.  Sign of spring: that nobody has eaten it.

The horse jail has gone up.  Gone all winter, but up now that everyone has to live in the arena as the grass grows.  The jail is not to keep Jedda in.  It is to keep everyone else out so that she gets to eat all her feed in peace.

Do you recognize this?  I do, I think.  I think I remember – green –

Like an Easter egg hunt – I found  MORE grass hiding under the tractor.

And that’s all, folks!