Try explaining daylight savings time to a 5-year-old. I prefer Dave’s approach: “I don’t know why it just skips forward like that, but I do know it doesn’t make sense.” Evelyn accepted it, as only a 5-year-old can.
An extra hour of sun, especially on a wintery March day expected to hit 75 degrees? You bet I’ll take it.
I’m surprised to see clean nails on the keyboard before me. I planted four tulips, a gaggle of hyacinths, straightened sugar snap peas, and gathered acorns and twigs—debris everywhere. I’m in full outdoor mode, so the bottoms of my feet and fingernails will rarely be clean. Living in a new house, with new cream-colored carpets and a new cream-colored couch, puts a damper on my Tom Sawyer ways. So now, I scrub the soles of my feet at the hose and let the sprinkler double as a hand-washing station.
The dormant, dead-looking grass is waking up. To help it breathe, I blew limbs, leaves, and acorns off yesterday, then took a plastic leaf rake to scrape the surface, dragging last season’s brown into a pile before blowing it away again. Then Dave took to the wheeled fertilizer cart to sling that nitrogen rich stuff like a boss.
Take what we did today, multiply it by twenty, and that’s what I have left to do. I see myself as a fancy person’s landscaper now, so I can’t just half-ass flower beds or skip the edging of the grass. I have to take this business seriously—take myself seriously—as the keeper of these grounds.
After a Home Depot run, three underpriced Boston ferns now adorn the front of the house. Along with rocking chairs, they seem to be the quintessential front porch aesthetic here in the South. So, when in Rome… or in Central, Georgia.
Last but not least, I played Lake on Xbox for the first time last night. I’m no gamer, but I dabble. And this particular dabble had me playing as a middle-aged woman returning to her quiet and small hometown to run her dad’s mail route while he’s away on a two-week vacation. You should have seen me—swerving that mail truck all over those winding roads, pulling up onto curbs, and overstaying my welcome at my lumberjack crush’s house. (He does have a waterfall next to his place, which I climbed a short hill to admire, so I stand by my choices.)
All that to say—I’ll play again. It was fun, and the fact that it was set in the 1980s was just the cherry on top.
That about does it for me tonight. I’ll be back with more updates from the yard and whatever other prep I get to before my parents arrive next week.
Lots of love,
Jaclynn
Going On 40 