I’m enjoying this spring – every morning I take out the compost (which is a task that I procrastinate on in the winter, letting the buckets molder and decompose right on our kitchen counter rather than taking it outside in the cold) half-full as an excuse to watch the buds spring open on my semi-newly planted trees. I have a new redbud, new serviceberries, new witch hazels. I have new daffodils and new crocuses. The redbud and serviceberries are leafing out in little bits, but the witch hazel is still a mystery to me. I look at it and wonder if the little stick I planted last fall made it through the winter. I think so, but I’m not quite sure. Sometimes I think it’s green and getting a little fuzzier, and sometimes I think it’s unchanging and a brittle as a plastic straw.
There is the dogwood tree that was planted in the depths of the pandemic by our beloved former tenants who now live in Texas. For many years, it got ravaged by the deer and its trunk half broken at the base by who-knows-what because we had put up only a flimsy cloak of netting as protection. There was also the time I accidentally nicked it with the weed wacker putting a bright green and deep gash in it’s baby, struggling bark. But now I’ve fortified the defense and the deer don’t get to it and it it now taller than me (by just a bit) and is mending its wounds, slowly growing bark around the eaten and broken parts.
Sometimes I feel like that – a little wounded all the time. Serious difficulties and tragedies, set backs, a stinging comment, a world run by toddlers. But I’m also protected and shielded and strong and capable of regrowth. We are having Edda’s extravaganza birthday party tomorrow and it’s always a bit stressful to me even though Jeremy runs the show mostly. A few weeks ago, while he was away, he said – don’t think of a party where you are the host, try to think of it as a party where you are a guest.
I’m baking so much that the kitchenaid it on the counter almost all the time. I baked on Tuesday, I baked on Thursday – it’s fun and interesting and so absolutely caloric. Our supplies of chocolate chips, butter, flour and brown sugar – things I’d not really thought about for decades, I now know the quantities in our pantry intimately. I can modify what I’m baking by the ingredients I have. My mom bought a six pack of cream cheese from Costco of which she gave me 4. Four! I made a cream cheese berry coffee cake for Edda’s actual birthday. On Thursday, I found myself without any butter, so I went to oil-based cooking which ended up with chocolate muffins. I