April

Here we are, the first Monday in April. It's 58 degrees and cloudy. I've turned the heat off in the house but I'm home for the afternoon and I think I'll just reach over to the thermostat and turn it on. There.

We finally got out in the yard for some raking and garden tilling. Handspade and shovel tilling. My raised bed has some rockin' soil. I did the squeeze test on it: "Take a loose ball of soil about the size of a ping-pong ball in the palm of your hand. Gently squeeze it between the ball of your thumb and your index finger.... If it crumbles, it has a reasonably balanced texture" (Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening). The other test is the "undercover test": "Observe your soil closely. [Look for] abundant earthworms and other soil organisms." Turns out my raised bed of dirt passed both tests. Healthy topsoil, good balance of moisture, earthworms galore!

Megan was home for Easter break and she and Ken raked the yard, Tim pruned wayward branches, I started in on the gardens. One down, three to go. Days like that makes me realize we can achieve family harmony. Many times in the last twenty years I wondered if we would, if we could. But this weekend we played together, cooked together, worked together. We're such a small family unit you'd think, piece of cake. Compared to the big St. Paul Catholic families or our own original families, which were often double in size, and four seems completely doable. But we're a stubborn group, sensitive and boisterous at once. Seems sometimes no one is willing to back down. Now that the boy is a card-carrying teenager (driver's permit--license soon to come) he's got a whole new world to claim. We used to be able to plan a movie or a meal with relatively easy buy-in from him; now he too wants full say.

Which is only right.

As long as he helps with prep or clean-up.

So the garden. Early warm spring means I might actually get some things planted and moved in time. Last year I didn't take enough time to weed in the spring so I had wick-wack in all my beds and then never could catch up with it all. And I rushed the planting of herbs and tomatoes so that the basil was crowded by the sage was crowded by the tomatoes. No harmony there.

The first Monday in April. My fingers are fat and dirty, swollen from the first day out in the garden, the first dig. It's a good feeling. Goes well against this sterile keyboard.

The hope of spring--keep that soil loose and balanced, those earthworms actively content.