A Day in the Life: Here Comes the Sun

It's been gray and chilly and drizzly. I have been utterly exhausted for days, so tired that I wanted nothing more than to just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep for a week.

Today there was sun.

I dug up the grass that had invaded the strawberry bed and planted new strawberries. I weeded the garden. I thinned the spinach, the beets and the salad greens, so we're having fresh green salad tonight for dinner, the first harvest of the season. I planted basil and baby bok choi and carrots.

I had help in the garden. Kindergarten gent and his second-grade cousin each earned thirteen cents squashing snails, and they sat on the edge of the garden box snacking on baby bok choi they thinned from the salad mix. Kindergarten gent will not eat any green food that we put on his plate. Green food is defiled and heinous and foul. But I casually mentioned that his older brother loved the bok choi so much he ate it straight out of the garden, and next thing I knew my greens-hating gent was pulling off a leaf and chewing. "Yum!" he said, and helped himself to another. I tried not to faint or show my amazement in any other way, lest I call his attention to the fact that the food, in any other circumstances, might be considered green.

I baked bread, the honey whole-wheat bread I used to make when I was a kid.

I took care of the chicks and the chickens, cleaning and watering and feeding. Collected two round eggs, one still warm.

I read a book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver) and I napped in the sun. Well, that's not entirely true. I read about two sentences of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Then I used the book as a sort of tiny pillow. The napping part is true.

I am sunburned and dirty and scratched and tired. My hair is frizzy and wild. My fingernails are dirty, and I went barefoot in the garden so my heels are a disgrace.

But I feel whole. I didn't realize until this day how much I craved sunshine.

I just took two beautiful round brown loaves of bread out of the oven. The house smells of fresh bread and soup, and my favorite ceramic bowl is full of fresh tossed greens-spinach, beet greens, lettuce. My children are out-of-doors riding bikes and looking for bugs in the grass. A day of sunshine and good work and outdoor play has restored me. I feel like my self again, refreshed. I'm off to swing in the hammock until dinner time, with my book.

Life is good.