It was seventy degrees today, and I spent the morning laying out the planting beds at the Cedar Ridge Farm – eight large beds, either 20 x 30 or 40 x 30, bisected by 10 foot wide paths. The work itself was tremendously satisfying – straight lines of string, hard whacks on wooden stakes, the creak and crack of a winter soft body protesting against the work.
But what I desperately needed, and this day gave me, was a day outside, alone. After a week when everyone wanted a piece of me – work, kid, house – there was just nothing of me left, and I needed some silence and wind and dirt to put myself back together again.
I wasn’t completely alone. I brought Otis, more for his own spring fever than for company for me. I glanced up once from my measuring and pounding and saw him romping, flinging my discarded bright blue sweater in the air and leaping after it, full of bliss. I think I’ll always remember the sight – brown soil and light straw, gray sky, brown and black dog, and a blue sweater like a banner in the wind.
My joy today was more sedate than Otis’, but inside I was leaping, too.
A Gardener's Lot 