To coin a phrase, What is so rare as a day in spring? Nice weather days this spring have been all too few, but today was one of them! "I feel like Laura Ingalls!" I said to my son Greg, as I sat in a lawn chair and watched him till the ground for the family garden.
The sky was a majestic blue dome over the wide, green pasture. The hill hid any view of other farms or human activity, so it felt as if we were the only people on the spacious, sweeping prairie. Other than caring for the chickens, my husband and I were mainly onlookers at this seasonal ritual of putting in the garden.
"This is not monetarily profitable," observed our college grandson Adam as he watched his parents set out onions and lay strips of seeds for carrots and lettuce. These were put into raised bed containers, but he had tilled a long row for a stand of corn.
"That's because it's soul food," I countered, "It's good for the soul." His parents smiled ruefully, but agreeing. The rich, black, fresh-tilled earth was a dark contrast to the deep, bright green of the grass cut through by the tiller. I knew it smelled wonderful, recalling the rich, earthy aroma of the furrows I walked in as a child behind Daddy's horse-drawn plow.
"They'll always remember this," I said of their two little girls on their hands and knees, faces near the dirt, as they plucked grass clumps out of the rows. They worked intermittently, as their attention was frequently diverted by the beckoning swing with its wide board seat that hung from a high branch of an enormous tree a little way off.
Later, I would dawdle there, swinging gently, grasping the thick, rough rope in each hand as my husband srummed on the guitar he had magically produced from the back seat of the car. The deep, soft grass was lush underfoot, not yet worn away by summer feet.
Soon I was tired and wanted to go home, telling my husband I might be getting sick, even thinking I sensed a slight temperature. Sick or not, one thing I know for sure, I had a case of spring fever!
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