A smattering of updates.

Spring's sprung early, at least three weeks early, and it's fascinating watching what's popping up when.  The flowering things seem to be flowering with extra abandon, enjoying the extra energy left over after the mildest weather anyone seems to remember here.  The growing things are likewise growing with abandon; grass is already being mown for hay in the fields here, and our side yard is looking more like a meadow than a vacant lot.  The kids are playing in the sandbox and getting ticks already (how I hate ticks; after battling tularemia and Lyme's disease with Gracie, we only have one major tick-borne disease for her to catch; she is apparently irresistibly tasty).

I went last week with 9000 other women to receive the Word through a woman.  I'm still chewing on her words, thinking about what God would have me learn.  One thing:  a spiritual life lived alone, without connection to others, will on some level lack maturity.  I'm prone to this and it rings like a warning bell in my head.

I requested a second 10x20 plot in the community garden this year, bringing my total to 400 square feet of responsibility.  I think I may be certifiably insane.  If we don't get a significant harvest out of this year's efforts, I will be hard to console.  I've been watching Back to Eden repeatedly and pondering this good ol' boy's rain gutter grow system and am experimenting with both in this year's gardens.  Hopefully at least one of the methods does well, as my plot looks markedly odd compared to the straight rows and unmulched soils in most everyone else's.  I'm holding my breath and praying that my larder be filled and my vanity coddled.

We're on the home stretch of a year homeschooling kindergarten.  It's challenging, I'm feeling somehow both triumphant and a failure.  She's reading well, she's smart and fabulous, but I'm tired and I feel keenly my failures in time management and consistency.  Next year we'll do some things differently and try to cut  fewer corners.  I'm sure that, without the accountability of this program, I'd be a feeble homeschooling mama.  Next year:  a stricter schedule, piano lessons, community youth choir tryouts, and a stricter schedule.  Oh, and did I mention a stricter schedule?

My little uncommunicative boy is suddenly full of words, big and small, speaking in full sentences and full of "please" and "thank you" and all kinds of personality.  My mouth gapes open regularly.  This boy I'm fully conversing with, in some ways meeting, for the first time, deeply pleases me.  He's funny, sweet, gentle, good-spirited, loving.  Careful, always, but also enthusiastic and willing to try to please.  Stubborn as hell occasionally, but all in all, a beautiful little soul.  I am so, so proud of him.  I knitted him a sweater with a huge Q on it this spring, and I bask in his delight in it as if it was warm sunshine.  

Looking forward to summer:  a week at the beach next month, a Daisy Girl Scout day at Build-a-Bear, swimming lessons, cookouts, picnics, river loungin', NO school requirements, adventuring sort of summer.  Bring it ON.

But until then, a few more weeks of tracking school hours and marching with Gracie through curriculum that neither of us have a particular taste for.  Summer beckons, and spring is doing a pretty good job of seducing us as well.  It's time to resist their siren calls and buckle down for the home stretch.