"The Earth has shaken up now..."

Lenten roses blooming behind our double-wide.

Last night we had a rolling thunderstorm that came in around dusk and stayed with us most of the night. When it was not pouring or thundering or flashing, it was balmy and still, blackness. I even woke in the middle of the night, very much awake, perhaps confused by the new time change or the muggier air. I rarely wake ready to get up at 2 or 3 in the morning but I'm glad I went back to sleep as it was a busy day ahead. [There was a small part of me that thought I might accomplish much in the four hours before the rest of the house got up but she was easily overtaken by Reason and even Sloth.]

Today was our friend Melvin's birthday and his wife Anna and I made him a birthday dinner at noon for the entire crew as they are almost finished with our projects here (for now). It was in the 70s, breezy, warm enough to not need a sweater. I will miss having them around as things have been bustling and soon the bustling will be on us (and for me, it can be hard to bustle at times!).

In the car this morning Anna and I spoke about the storm last night and I noticed how green everything had become, just in the past day.

"Melvin says that the Earth has shaken up now, after that first March storm, and now things are really going to grow."

When I drove Anna home I noticed some daffodils blooming by her duck pond. At our own home I remembered the Lenten roses that had surprised me here last February and March (they really did bloom until Easter, as their name describes). I returned home today to see them, rather ignored and unnoticed just off our back porch, but blooming there all the same, making a case for themselves.


Before I packed it up last July, I took some photos of our Hancock "Herb Room"

Meanwhile, over at the shop we started to unload our last container filled with beloved and necessary things from our old barn and, more importantly, for me at least, the contents of our former garden shed (or "herb room" as we called it, as Temple's grandmother had done, in the northeast room of the barn). So I'm seeing things I hadn't seen in a while (as I didn't have a garden last summer) and putting them aside for our first garden here. (In fact, my youngest boy is now motioning for me to come out and unload the car into our small garden shed at the double-wide, left over from Miss Lillian's garden days--and it is she I thank for the perennials and fruit trees on the place, and the Lenten roses.) But before I unloaded the car, even though it is getting dark (it will be dark by 8pm), I had to check those roses and to write about them.

Spring--the annual rite of hope and promise and always a "shaking up," whether we need it or not! And boy do I need it!