planting seeds

Spring is upon us, which means deep clouds crossing the afternoon skies, rain puddles to splash in, and seeds to nestle into the earth. Because we're very slowly working our way towards getting our house ready to put on the market, I've been doing some grooming of the more wily places on our property. The previous owners were landscapers, so all the plants were gone but lovely stone curves were left, ready to be filled. When we moved in, I plunked in a raspberry bush, and one autumn, Ryan trimmed it back a bit too voraciously, which killed the main plant, but you know how those runners can be.

So the runners are coming out too and into those empty spaces, places where walnut trees are sallying forth and strange, unknown vines, I'm putting in clusters of flowers. The kids are helping, which I'm hoping means they'll get a little less--well, destructive, when it comes to places in which they can alter the landscape. But isn't that what it's all about? Funneling that energy into constructive projects.

So we dug holes and filled them with plants and seeds. We counted worms. We talked about the good spiders do, about beetles, about root systems, and Maya now knows how to name and identify a taproot.

I can't help but think, too, about the talk of roots when we moved from Chattanooga to the Midwest--and how the kids feel about letting this house go and to make a new home. About home being the four of us (along with a pair of dogs). Taproots.

our neighbor's tree

When Maya was born, we had this beautiful neighbor my grandmother's age named Fran. She'd have us over with the baby and she sang to her: Take me out to the ball game... We loved Fran so much. We'd chat over the fence about this and that and sit on her front porch and talk about small, good things.

She passed away not long after Finn was born, and we miss her so much. My ear always cocks a bit when I step out with the dogs, thinking she'll call over the fence, but it's quiet now. Her daughter gave us Fran's piano, and the kids love pounding away on it; Ryan loves his strangely perfect noodling (he has such a good ear).

Fran had a walnut tree in her backyard--one that leans up and into the sky with a chittering squirrel who is always scolding me for something. Every early autumn, it drops nuts, and two autumns ago, I collected as many as I could to dye yarn. This last autumn, I let them be for kindness to the squirrel (after all, this was his hoard I was disrupting) and now that the snow has folded back, we're finding all of the leftover bits.

There's a lot you can do with a collection of such stones: categorize them, count them, make prints with them, sketch them, tell stories about them, plant them (well, that last should have happened in the autumn when there was still nut-meat).

Maya tells me she loves these halves the most because they are hearts. It's funny how I always thought of them as little piggy-noses and my sweet daughter sees love.

what looks like art

It seems funny to post these snowy pictures today when outside, we wore T-shirts to play in the mud, but this is Minnesota in spring.

Wait, spring. And this is still technically late winter. Yep, this is typical of maybe April, even early May, but such an anomaly for this time of year. I remember a few of Ryan's birthdays (he's a St Patty's Day baby) where I was doing the first of winter's major pooper scooping (ah, my friend calls it "poop soup," and that is so, so horrifyingly apt), but we did it in February of this year.

Either way, Friday was a big day: a big meeting at the school and that night, the book launch for one of my press's first books. (Ventriloquy. So, so good.) My energy was all over the place--thinking about the future, thinking about being a publisher at an event for the first time, trying to get my kids to stop climbing the walls, and I realized this one thing would just help all the dust settle around me.

Clarity, breath, outdoors.

Here we are: snow etchings, trunk climbing, don't go near that ice!ing, trailing limbs to see the paths behind us'ing, paw printing.

Maya was so thrilled: "Look at the birds! The big black birds!" We'd gone to the wildlife sanctuary the weekend before and she knew them to be crows.

She also found this little blip of oil spilled onto the walkway and asked about it. In awe, she told me the splotch "looks like art."

I love her so. Have I mentioned that yet?

We saw, then, leaves encased in Friday's ice, bald eagles filtering through trees.

wildlife sanctuary: of the non-avian variety

There seem to be three central zones of exploration at the wildlife sanctuary: there's the aviary, where one can feed ducks and geese and visit birds of prey; there's the indoor nature center full of exploratory nooks and specimen drawers and live animals in smaller containers; and there's this last area, a trail complete with mainly mammals.

It's hard for me to tell the difference between a coyote and a wolf, particularly when whipping by at higher speeds. Even fairly still, I had to squint and scrunch at the above two, and I think much of that is the thickness of the coyotes--they're wonderfully plump living in their pens, and the fierce flung antics are really play as opposed to the more natural competition.

We were lucky in our visit: the wolves began their haunting choral howl. I video'ed some of it (and some of the birds of prey having a meal) and hope to compile those three and share soon. Maya was thrilled, and she also overheard one of the workers call one wolf Luna: What are all the other names, Mama?

What I'm struck with, as a parent, is the absolute pleasure of observing your child observing. Maya was able to tell me names of many of the turtles: painted and snap, and we learned more: wood and others. She overheard someone else calling the snapping turtle a dinosaur turtle and we talked about why that might be. 

Five is such an amazing age, isn't it? The curiosity and language are explosive and are leading to actual conversations outside of the why-and-answer. Discussions and imaginings. I'm learning so much too--learning so I can answer her questions, but learning, again, how to ask questions. What that was like. Parenthood truly leads to a lot of just getting it done, but it also forces you to slow down and embrace too.

I love that this was our last look before we had to return home. Hello, world, we'll see you again sometime soon, because she's asked it already: Can we go back again? And again and again, my love.

wildlife sanctuary: the nature center

We took the kids to the sanctuary on Saturday because mama wanted to go. I wanted to see the birds and look in the drawers at all of the preserved bits of nature and peer into the glass cases and say hello to the animals. 

I also wanted the kids to see it, to come back on a regular basis to look at the animals that live in our nearby woods and prairies and ponds. I want going to places like this to be a part of their childhood memory landscape.

Especially since my daughter is so enamored with the animal kingdom. She thrills at telling us all kinds of informative things about the unique and strange. She loves animal habitats and reproduction--eggs and nests and mamas with their babies. So much mamas with their babies. She has this amazing balance between the factual and the imaginative. She'll tell stories about the animals' lives, but she'll also include anatomy and physiology. She'll draw a tree with pine needles and leaves, knowing that doesn't happen, and tell us that it is a magical forest. 

So when it's Sunday and you want to sleep in and you want to relax because you've got a five-hour drive home ahead of you and you want to read a book or burrow under the covers, you don't. You get out of bed and shower, and sure, maybe much slower than usual because it's still Sunday, but you don't linger as you might because the day before, right after you leave the wildlife sanctuary, your daughter says from the backseat: "Mama, I didn't like that place." And pauses at the right artful amount to say emphatically, "I loved it! Can we go again tomorrow?"

The above picture? That's why we say yes.