How Sweet It Is

What more could we possibly ask for?

The perfect spring day. Sunny, slight wind, warmer by far than yesterday with its overcast and stiff wind. Just made for doing the kind of clean-up my husband is engaged in, emptying the third of our composters into one that's almost empty, freeing it up, then leaving us with two to use, the third to be discarded. It was full of turf from previous years' excavations for opening up new gardens, and never did break down into usable compost, proving in a way why turf roofs used on English cottages were so usefully long-lived.

Cleaning up the mess under the old apple tree, freeing up the area so a rudimentarily-useful shed to store the snow-thrower and mechanical de-thatcher in will have room, once he decides to build it. The freshly-cleared-out area under the new deck that he built last month after taking apart the old rotting one will store all of our garden pots overwinter henceforth, once the brick pavers are put in place. Our gardens are thriving; the two magnolias truly beautiful with their blowsy bright blooms. The jade and the Sargenti crabs beginning their bloom.

The bergenia and the tulips, the hyacinths and the snake-head fritalleries also in bloom. Our climbing and bush roses are leafing out nicely. The French lilac has set its buds. The climbing hydrangea is on track, and the tree peonies are coming along nicely, while the other peonies are shooting their red stems and leafs skyward. The weeping mulberries are beginning to leaf out, and the flowering peas are just on the cusp of producing their bright yellow flowers. Clematis are awakening in the gardens, creeping upward.

We took an afternoon walk in the ravine, needed that hour's ramble with our two little dogs to relax and enjoy our freedom, placing peanuts atop tree stumps, into holes in the trees, wherever a peanut can be lodged, and the squirrels and birds can find them. We saw a bluejay and a hawk during our perambulation. Noted that the lilies-of-the-valley are on the cusp of sending up their tiny bells, and the red baneberry is beginning to flower. False Solomon's seal is finally making its presence, the trilliums are in full bloom; mostly red, a handful of white.

Best of all the foamflowers are blooming, and finally the Jack-in-the Pulpits, too. There are wild strawberries in bloom everywhere we look, interspersed with woodland violets, yellow and mauve. The sumacs are sending up their leaf buds, the wild apple trees are leafing out, and the oaks, and the populars and the maples. The hawthorns are slow, but they're beginning to evince a green tracery as well. The tips of the spruce are bright green with new growth; even the wild raspberries and thimbleberries have begun their spring awakening.

At home, we sat out, for the first time yet, on the new deck, enjoying the calm, the bright sun, reading newspapers. Our daughter tells us over the telephone she already has her humming birds back, swooping about her in tandem, in sheer joy, as she works in her gardens, close to the bedrock of the Canadian Shield. When her daughter, our granddaughter, calls after school, she reads to me her latest grade 7 school literary assignment, re-writing Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" poem, replacing some of the arcane words with those of her own.

While she's at it, she feels compelled to haul out one of her old nursery rhyme books, and reads several of Robert Lewis Stevenson's poems, that have been favourites of hers, over the years. At one time I used to read those poems and countless others to her when she was very young; now twelve, she reads them to me. How sweet it is.