Anticipation

Spring is due any second now, the daffodils are in-bud, but waiting for more sunlight before they trumpet the news. Yesterday, our first "earthworm morning" with the spring rain and thaw flooding the tunnels and sending dozens wriggling for the surface with the certain particular smell that the combination of earthworms and wet earth exude. And tiny little leaves settle on the spirea , the salvia has turned green again, another month to see if the fall's project of splitting & transplanting the lavender yields an abundance of spikes for the bees, or another trip to the greenhouse.

It is time too, to say goodbye to these small rituals. I didn't think to mark the last fire in the fireplace, the last snow, the last snowman in this front yard. We are due to pack boxes and dismantle this life for the next: the next post, the next borrowed house, the even more temporary quarters of a school assignment. And then another: undetermined, undefined. The worlds begin to touch and intrude one upon the other, the world of possibility, of change, of adventure. But reaching out, the comfort of this home slips away into the past. I am looking for grace. I am always learning who I am, who I might be.

I turn the soil, rake out the fallen leaves, add another day's grinds to the compost pile. I think of tomatoes and gourds, and perhaps a pumpkin vine for the enriched soil. And wonder if the robins will return even though their nesting tree was broken in this year's storm. The red-bellied tomatoes will be a gift, to whoever comes after us. And I have half a summer to watch for their yellow trumpets' heralding.