It's a Saturday, a little after 1:00; and as is my usual routine at this hour, I am waiting for my daughter to finish her clarinet lesson. I'm about to eat lunch:
It's a gorgeous salad, with many of my very favorite things: sweet potatoes, caramelized onions, goat cheese. The coffee shop is a tad less crowded than usual, and I have scored a prize table:
And to wash down my lovely lunch, I have been served this picture-perfect soy latte. Bliss, right?
I am climbing the walls. Counting the minutes. Can't wait to leave. It's MAY, for heaven's sake -- what in the world am I doing ANYWHERE but my garden?
They say that in the spring a young man's fancy turns to love. I wouldn't know, never having been a young man myself. But I can say with authority that in spring, a middle-aged woman's fancy turns to plants, with an obsessiveness that would put any hormone-driven 17-year-old boy to shame.
It's astonishing that I get anything done at all, really, this time of year. I am constantly stealing out to the garden to see what's broken dormancy. I'm sneaking in trips to the garden center to get an extra hosta or columbine to fill in a bare patch in the border. I make countless daily visits to check on my lettuce patch:
And then repeat visits, to see if anything has grown in the last few hours. Because sometimes it has:
Have you ever seen kale so hale? Lettuce so lush? Don't you want to yank it out of the soil and devour it on the spot, dirt still clinging to the leaves?
No, you really don't. Dirt tastes like dirt. And besides, you don't really know what wildlife has been prowling around the garden in your absence, and e coli is no joke. Wash your food before you eat it. And while you're at it, wash your hands.
Spring fever has its moment. But motherhood transcends all seasons.