Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Sadness in the Beauty

We received the forecasted soaker over the weekend, better than a half inch.  I planted the corn in the rain Sunday, put up the deer fence on Monday, and sprayed the weeds on Tuesday, latest warm dry day.  It was a great time to pull weeds as the ground was wet and the weather warm.  Did the edges around the driveway and the rock garden by the gazebo, as well as mowed around some edges.  We could be mowing everything again; it's the season when grass grows a mile a minute.

The peas are about 4 - 6 inches tall but nothing that was planted on Saturday has broken the surface yet.  We had a couple leaves of fresh lettuce from the volunteer plant that appears in the garden.  Nature does a better job of growing things than I will ever do.  The volunteer potato and onions are looking great as well.

California poppies are blooming, have been for several days.  Also a couple peonia have blossomed, the one near the barn is great much like last year and one in the row has dominated the poppies and iris and bluebells and weeds to reach the blooming stage.  Most of the others are surviving by the skin of their teeth.  It's not my big success story.  But I keep hoping.

Why the title?  Amid the trips to the yard and garden, we have focused on the death of a dear friend in Alaska and the impending death of another friend and neighbor here in Oregon.  In retrospect the spring goes like this.  My sister's father-in-law who was almost 100 died this spring.  My brother's ex-father-in-law died earlier this month.  Two classmates from high school died this past month.  A dear dear friend who traveled to Africa with us and also joined us in several other service trips suddenly died a couple months ago and now another service trip co-traveler is days from death.  Another neighbor, in her nineties, died a couple months ago.  It's almost more than one can handle at one time.

But the trees are green and the roses are red, so I say to myself, it's a wonderful world.

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