Welcome, spring

Hello, friends. It’s early spring in eastern Ontario. This means that everything – everything! – is brown, there’s salt and grit all over the sidewalks and roads, and the weather is still mostly wintry. If T. S. Eliot had lived here, he would absolutely, positively have declared that March, not April, is the cruellest month.

Despite this, we had a lovely, lazy long weekend. Dinner with neighbours. An Easter brunch tradition with friends. And we started some seeds in seedling trays: butternut and acorn squash, sugar pumpkin, kale, eggplant, watermelon, peppers, basil chrysanthemums, and as many tomato varieties as we could find. It’s only through rituals like these that I begin to have confidence that spring will actually arrive.

And then: look what the wind blew into our garden!

Tattered and miraculous and imperfect and awe-inspiring.

Thank you. I needed that.