A small, unfocussed blur; a standing chill

A squash blossom in my garden

With rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

I worked in the garden tonight.  Vines tied upwards, new dark driplines run through beds, raspberries picked and thinned; twine around black currants to restrain their rowdy growth, eggshells at the foot of the tomato plants, garlic scapes snipped and quickly sautéed in oil with freshly cut broccoli.   

A riot of carrots

There is a robin nest just behind the garden fence.  From 6:00am until 9:00:pm, the little chicks cry for food.  "meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep....."

I exulted when the dripline timer turned on right on schedule, and reveled in the focussed water on my plants, which have suffered so much in this cold spring.  But tomorrow the pieces of the greenhouse arrive, and I'll put it together and know again that special greenhouse smell that I recall so well.  I would find my grandfather would asleep in his, surrounded by tomatoes.  At the age of 45, exactly how old I am as of last saturday, he uprooted his family and they fled for their lives to a country where neither he nor they spoke the language; he went from a job as a harbor master of a busy port to a field laborer, picking fruit.  It was a familiar job: he had grown up helping my great grandfather tend the gardens of an imperial estate.  He didn't complain, he was thankful for a second chance at life that many like him did not get.

I can't believe I'm fucking 45 years old!  I will take a page from my grandfather's book of life, and not complain.