Gardening Day

May 8, 2010

Okay, morning pages can be my blog or my blog can be morning pages and it can all be a spilling of my thoughts onto the record, hopefully some worthwhile. May eighth, 2010. It sounds like science fiction to me. Sometimes I’m sure I’m still living in the last century. A splendid blustery, sun and fast moving cloud morning after a thunderous and wet night. We needed the rain. The birds are loving it. Tomorrow I do a spring count with friends. The migrants have flooded in over the past few days. Yesterday I saw or heard nine different warblers up at the old Keaton farm, where there had only been a handful two days before. I stalked what sounded like a northern parula for forty-five minutes with no success. Darn. It would have been a life bird. Has anyone noticed that the leaves came out before the birds did this year? The treat was running into a flock of yellow rumps and a good look at a yellow billed cuckoo who was busily eating caterpillars. It was a very welcome sight at it looks to be another bumper caterpillar year, tents and black clusters of writhing worms everywhere in the woods.

I am finished with my year teaching drawing at Alfred State College. I’m feeling wistful about students I may never see again, but reveling in the thought of more time. I am a one track person. I seem to need clear slates to work on. Yes, I’m spoiled. A person can do much in spare, disjointed moments. Having more time is also a bit scary. Now I have no excuse—except for all the gardening, traveling, horseback riding, birding, fishing, kayaking, etc. that I want to do! In the end, we make time for what we want most to accomplish. Argh! I've been watching too much Grey's Anatomy--I'm beginning to sound like Meridith!

This Saturday is a gardening day: weeds to pull from the damp, softened ground, fence posts to set for the new plot, mulch to spread, seeds to put into the earth. Yesterday I watched my tray of morning glory, cosmos, and sunflower seedlings sprouting, new ones popping up each hour. It was miraculous. Age old and brand-new. So good for the soul. Twelve hours from now I will lie down to sleep with aching muscles, dirt under my nails, ears full of birdsong, nostrils full of lilac and new cut grass, and my inner eye brimming with the spectacle of green and growth and flower and rich, open ground.