Spring Awakenings

Very often, the sweetest pleasures are the simplest ones; done too often they might become ordinary, but savored just once or twice a year, they melt on your tongue and linger even after you've moved on.  Sunday morning we pulled up the bedroom shades and had the windows open....we propped up pillows, sipped rich, dark coffee from the upstairs coffeemaker (what?  you mean everyone doesn't keep a coffeemaker in the kitchen AND in or near the bedroom?), piled seed & plant catalogs on the bed, and spent a couple of hours planning, thinking out loud, discussing, taking notes, ooohing & ahhing.  We planned our two most immediate garden projects--a cold frame and fencing in the vegetable raised beds that have become viewed as giant litter boxes by three members of the gang o' five--agreed to be disciplined and portion out this year's garden $$$ in specific, planned  directions (can one really have TOO many coneflowers?) and dreamed of happy honeybees and long dinners on the porch admiring our handiwork. 

Industrious little worker bees that we are, the cold frame is already built.  We wandered the property and discovered lilacs and wild raspberries starting to bud, wild ginger spreading under its blanket of leaves, and evidence that someone(s) made fine use of all the fallen hickory nuts.  We visited the future home of Linda's bees and made a slight alteration that will better suit their needs (they'll get morning sun but during the hottest part of the day will be somewhat sheltered, and are out of the way of any potential falling branches/twigs from thunderstorms and winter snows).  Saturday had been quite productive as we did the clean-up out front that we neglected in Fall.  September is, hands down, my busiest time at work; yard work pales in comparison to lying on the couch zombielike on weekends, or taking drives with Linda to admire the Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountain tapestries.  We remedied that Saturday, moving several spirea--planted before we moved here--into the sunlight it's been reaching and begging for, collecting pots that held jewels like caladium and freesia and so on.  It was a weekend long ritualistic celebration of Spring, and every moment was delicious.