would somebody please tell the atmosphere that it's the END of MAY? these cooler temperatures and rainy days are supposed to come in April, and May is the month of flowers. i guess the current atmosphere wasn't taught the "april showers bring may flowers" rhyme? geez.

we've got two more days of rain and highs in the 50s to go until we can experience warm sunshine again (starting friday!). it's been like this for about two weeks now.

we already put away our winter wardrobe, so i've been washing and rewashing sweatpants and sweatshirts and socks for this family of five.

i'm so ready for summer!!!!

we've been spending the majority of our days on the outside of the house lately. it feels great to not need a coat, and to roam the yard again without heavy boots and deep snow keeping us from walking easily.

maybe it's because this yard has so much more foliage and life beneath the ground than our old yard did...but this year again, i'm surprised (by joy, of course) at the new buds forming on the otherwise dead-looking tree branches, and the bright green shoots sticking up out of the earth after a long hibernation. even though we're expecting it, it's always surprising that life returns after such a long, cold, dead winter.

i spent the day in the city on saturday. my friend serina and i (and her 5-month-old son, asher!) headed out bright and early to the salvation army fabric fair. we didn't realize just how nuts the fair actually is until we tried to maneuver our way through the crowds. i tried two or three times to browse through the patterns/book table, but the ladies wouldn't budge. these women meant business. we did score on some great new fabirc (cheap!) but made our way through as carefully as we could without getting hurt. :)

that afternoon, i met kenny and the boys (and my mom) at our old church for the shape note workshop i was so excited about. it was a lot of fun to sing in a group again (i rarely get this opportunity anymore since i'm not the singer in the family), and it was interesting learning a bit more about it. but kenny and i made the same observation about the actual singing: at this point, we'd much rather listen to it sung (by those who sing it a lot!) than to sing it ourselves. there was a huge need to pay attention to the line of music that you'd sing, and i honestly can't remember actually hearing the music being sung because i was too intent on getting the notes right. so i keep listening to the pieces from the Awake My Soul web site to get my fix.

in the warmth of the afternoon sun on sunday, we labored in the garden. now i know that this is (an example of) the type of work that God requires us to abstain from on the 7th day of the week...but seriously, is it work when it's so enjoyable? when it's all you've been wanting to do for the past three months of frozen temperatures? because it felt great to see the ground again, and to see the garden getting ready to be a bed of growth again. the boys helped us with their garden tools while adam napped. we breathed in the earth, the sun, the tractor diesel fumes....  if there is one thing i'd like to do away with, it's the tractor diesel. i wish there were such a thing as an affordable, green tractor that would make all the rest of our organic gardening and earth-keeping worth it. perhaps one day, the barn will be fixed up enough to house a few goats and sheep. because they're the perfect earth-friendly tractors around.

AND...we lost another chicken today. it was one of the black and white ones (silver laced wyandottes) - the ones i call george washington (they look just like him!). we believe she was hit by a car as she was lying, wings sprawled, in our rock/shrub garden. we're not sure it was a natural landing that put her there, or if someone put here there after doing the damage. she's had a proper burial and yes, we told the boys. and this after we were just telling someone how we've never lost a chicken to traffic, even though they freely walk in the street on a daily basis (cars normally slow down, honk, or stop). this puts our daily egg count down to about 10-11. thank goodness for friends who readily take eggs off our hands.

we've gone straight from never-ending snow to never-ending rain. which means it's at least above freezing, so i really can't complain.

but it's not been warm. we've only been making it into the high 30s and mid 40s at best our local weathermen are really trying to push us into spring with forecasts in the 50s. we're nowhere near.

but, the longer days, and the never-ending rain is doing something. there are green shoots in our flowerbeds, there is a light greenish hue (albeit splotchy) coming back to the grass and...the ladies started a-layin' again!

april 18th of this year was our one year anniversary of moving into the home of our dreams, on the lot of our dreams, at a fairly early age. we couldn't be more thankful for such a fun thing to celebrate without an actual party-celebration (we were brand new chicken parents on april 18th, having picked them up at the hatchery just two days previous!).

when we first moved here, i was sad a lot. i cried a lot. it probably had something to do with the fact that i was 33 weeks pregnant, had a baby, and went through my third bout of the "baby blues" post adam's birth. i thought it was because we had made the wrong decision moving to the country. away from the city. away from people we loved. away from people in general! i was given the "it takes you about a year to settle in properly" advice from several people and i found comfort in that. i knew that in a year, i'd feel more settled. i'd feel more like this was my home, and not just a place we were "trying out" for a few years.

after a year, i feel settled...and not so settled. i think it's because i will always have a bit of "the city" pulsing through my veins. i'll miss the city-smog smell when i have nothing but fresh air to breathe. i'll long for sidewalks and "block parties" when i can't even see my neighbors' house from my front yard. i speak only for myself because the boys don't know any difference (rowan can recognize a picture of our old house, but he wouldn't recognize it if we drove past it), and kenny is totally at home here (i won't go past the garage once it's dark out. we've got woods all around us, and bigger-critters still make me nervous).

and it's not that i don't consider this to be my home...it's just i think it's going to take me a lot longer than a year to truly feel settled. because i get giddy when we have a trip planned into "the city."

i have a list in my mind of what i miss the most, or what i don't like about country-living and one of what i love about living here, and what i don't miss at all of city/suburb-life. ironically, the "pros" of living here outweigh anything negative.

what i miss

• taking walks. tonight, we took a walk through our yard, and through a 6-acre field near us, up a steep, country road (speed limit is 35? 40?). we didn't pass one person. i miss our old neighborhood for walking and chatting with neighbors; spending time in the playground behind our house, talking to neighbors, other parents, new neighbors. being able to push the stroller without "four-wheeling" it.
• a sense of community. mabye it's because we had great neighbors in the city. or maybe it's because all our friends and family were within a 15 minute drive. we had and incredible church family (who won't let us go, thank goodness!) that we got to see weekly.
  
• good food. we always joked about how we had the pick of the best indian and thai restaurants a few minutes' drive from our old house. we're saving a lot of money not eating there, but i'm missing them. AND...good grocery stores with decent hours of operation. organic, whole foods? gotta drive into the city for those.

what i love

• the space. i know it's ironic, but i love the space we have here. the rolling hills and valleys we see and run along every day. i love seeing the boys run and run...chasing fireflies, chickens, rabbits. and i don't have to yell constantly to keep them from running into the road.
  
• our house. it's a dream to be living in a house big enough to house your entire family for holidays. we had 17 here for a few days over christmas. i love to be able to offer hospitality to friends by offering a guest room, a meal. we did this in our old house, but we have room to do it more here. i love that this house has been sitting here on this land for over a hundred years.
  
• the quiet. it's so quiet here, that when a car drives by, it actually wakes you up. which makes it hard to sleep with the windows open.
• our chickens. i love those 15 cluckers running around our yard, free-range.
• our future. we have so many great conversations, kenny and i, about what we want to do here. what we want our boys to be able to do, to learn, to experience. it's not that we couldn't do that in our old place, it's just a different way of letting them experience the same things. we have the best of both worlds...living in the peaceful, quiet, big, starry sky boonies, and able to get into the culture of the city in under an hour.

i'm almost embarrassed to admit the things i miss, which make me feel unsettled. but as i look at the above lists, i know that my "pro" list will overcome the "cons" list in no time. maybe i'll include a blog post a year from now and i'll laugh that it ever took me so long to be settled into what is our home.

and maybe i'll be walking farther than the garage once nightfall hits.

(the beginning of the "moving" series starts in april, 2006)

this morning, as we trolled the aisles of the grocery store, rowan looked up at me and said, "mommy, i'm SO happy it's spring!"

perhaps it was because i told him we were going to buy some ingredients for a special cake we were going to make together to celebrate the FIRST DAY OF SPRING! and any mention of cake, rowan is on-board.

last week, we had snow. then a day of rain. here are a few pictures of what that leaves behind.

at least the snow is melting and not lingering for weeks on end. the first picture is our back yard, which faces north. the mist is just above the pine tree-line. the second is of our barn, which faces west - therefore, a misty sunset. the most important part of these pictures to me is the green in them. since early january, we've had snow on the ground, and although that sounds like a lot of fun when you have three young boys, it isn't when the temperatures are in the single digits, or the youngest of those boys just doesn't want to be out for much longer than 5-10 minutes. we are ready to get outside and enjoy our yard again!

fortunately, the first day of spring here was 60 degrees. the warm air was so welcomed, and we celebrated!

our "first-day-of-spring" bunny cake...an idea i got from a blog i read sometime ago - i wish i could remember who it was! i wanted to decorate with fresh whipped cream, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries...but that cake will have to wait until mid-summer when those berries are ripe (and in our backyard!). and a walk outside..without bulky, winter coats!





and here is a haiku that perfectly describes the beauty of the transition from winter to spring.