I allotted myself one full day off. On Friday afternoon we got the family packed into our newly repaired Ford Explorer, paid a silly amount for gasoline, and headed up to my old haunts in Northern Wisconsin. Saturday was spent with friends we cannot see often enough, followed by a rare adult night out at a blues show, watching Otis and the Alligators perform, punctuated by getting to see more friends absent from our lives for about 15 years, and plenty of tap beer. This morning we were all up early, had a breakfast of steak, eggs and muffins served up by our friends sharing the cabin, had quick goodbyes, and came home.
The house is none the worse for wear. The multitude of cats were happy to be let back out of the house, and they did not appear to molest the house or each other any more than they ordinarily would. Recent plantings of the last of my tomatoes are all up and happily bending towards the windows. Snow is mostly gone, the fish pond has thawed out, and the winter’s detritus is obvious over everything now. A fine layer of deer hair covering the dog’s area is pretty much the only evidence that Piper plowed through the butchered carcasses of 3 deer and about 40 (whole) squirrels between November and February. Mounds of shelled sunflowers mark the ground beneath every bird feeder. The dog….leavings, are finally thawed out of the snow and ready to be buried under a new compost pile. The old compost pile is ready to be spread over the garden.
The beds of perennials, long hidden under a layer of leaves and snow, are ready to be finally uncovered, the old leaves and deadheads joining the new compost pile to wait a year before returning to the gardens. The lake, whose moods we have to live by, has not yet shrugged off her mantle of ice, but the impatient geese are voicing their demands, and I expect the lake to eventually give in. She always does.
I think spring is here.
