Sunny Days

Inspirational song: Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street (Sesame Street)

After six weeks of down time, finding myself with enough energy and little enough pain that I felt up to cleaning house for a couple hours was like the dawn of the first sunny day after weeks of storms. Okay, yes, you are right, I have reason to avoid sunny days now (or at least now I have an understanding why I always did instinctively). But my metaphor stands. It was refreshing to feel good enough to clean up my kitchen, dining room, and a little of my living room, after a month plus of looking at the crap piling up and not being able to do a damn thing about it. I still had a few stray Christmas decorations just discarded in the kitchen and on the spare dining room chairs, and after the man and I pulled down the last of the lights from the tall trees outside (yes, in March..), I finally stacked all of those things in the garage for the next nine months. Just in time for St Patrick's day, I put away the gold jingle bell wreath.

I saw a new forecast for spring for the country. We fall squarely in the "well above average" temperature bands. All of the old timers (meaning people who have lived years in Colorado, not necessarily old people) keep insisting that we'll pay for our warm February with late blizzards in April and May. After the latest predictions, I am not so sure the common wisdom will hold this time. I dread to think how my new garden will be affected if it does, but I really don't think it will happen. So far I haven't seen trees budding out, thankfully, but there are a lot of perennials starting to green up at ground level in my new front bed. I have bulbs sprouting all across the bed, with signs of tulips coming up already alongside the daffodils and crocus, and at least seven or eight other flowers have leaves spreading out about three-quarters of an inch tall all over the front of the house. I'm afraid of clearing out the leaves acting as mulch, in case it does take a turn for the colder, and these flowers need a blanket. But it's giving me the gardening itch. I have to hold back and let the man do most of the heavy lifting this year, but I'm going to bathe in sunscreen, cover myself up, don my big straw hat, and get out and get my hands dirty sooner or later.

There is a chance of rain or snow early next week. We shall see. Until then, we'll continue to prepare our space, and leave the back door open so the cats can have their dirt baths and the dogs can poke their heads in to the place where the food-giver lives.