210326 It doesn't matter where you are

Mar. 26

How the chestnut branches curl up like fingers! The buds are getting fat.

  

   Snow drops, our single white crocus that comes up by the maple tree each year. A neighbour has lovely egg-yolk yellow crocuses. 

  

The squill are usually later than the crocuses, and also twice as tall as these ones! 

*****

Yesterday the sky was a cloudless blue. Fig and I went to the hydro field and the cardinals were singing a spring song, with extra trills that I don't remember hearing before! There were woodpeckers knocking and robins singing their robin songs. Snowdrops are out and crocuses, yellow, white and purple everywhere. Tulip leaves are up and overnight some daffodil leaves shot up! Today the air is soft with the rain. It smells of Lake Huron; the wind is louder than the city noises and drowns them out. The natural world is as palpable here in central Etobicoke as it is on our green mountain in The Estrie.

*****

Indre, Robin and I have been working in the dollhouse finding new furniture and decor for a change-up. There are all sorts of bits and pieces in the cabinet the house sits on. We found flowerpots, and saucepans, dogs and cats, tiny glass canisters with seeds and pepper in them. And enough little dolls to fill all the rooms with activity. At five and a half, Robin is old enough to be careful with fragile things and to be able to join in the play. What a difference a year makes. Indre too: for many years I have played with the dollhouse with her, and her involvement, while very enthusiastic has been a little haphazard because of her age, but all of a sudden she is the planner and decorator, while I just watch, enjoying her creativity in searching out forgotten treasures.

  

  

There is a even a dollhouse for the children's room!

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The Cooper's Hawks have not arrived at our circle! I know that they only mated last year, (The male (I assumed!) arrived around February 15, 2020 and I listened to him calling for a mate for three weeks; then one day I heard her answer. They went on a honeymoon for 2 weeks, ((I kid you not.)) and then built their nest 2 doors down.) I assumed that one of them at least had grown up around here and so had returned. I am, perhaps stupidly, worried about them. I hope with more of my heart than I would have expected, that they have simply found a good nesting spot somewhere else. And their two children? They might have come back here. I belong to a delightful Facebook group called Learning About Ontario Birds, and many of the members have already been seeing Cooper's. We were lucky to share 2020 with our Hawks. That was a wonderful gift. I hope they are well.

*****

"But life don't clickety-clack down a straight-line track, it come together and it come apart."* I spent some time sitting in the hydro field yesterday, with a friend of many years whom, because of where we are in our lives and because of covid-19, perhaps, I have had an opportunity to get to know better. We looked back at the decades since we first met and our separate lives, so filled with career and family, how far we had come and now we are retired. I have a sense of meeting him on the other side of some passage - a passage of time of course, but almost like a sea. We have crossed the waters and now we sit on the other shore and talk about the sun and storms of our journeys. It was an interesting retrospective of our lives seen as a whole. 

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Last night, Robin was struggling with bedtime so I sat with him, sang and patted his back and talked some relaxation to him, like when he was two or three. It is easier for a gramma to be patient and let a child be little, than it is for a parent sometimes. He is just that much younger than Indre and concepts like the pandemic and Gramma and K going away are beyond his ability to process. He is stressed, I think, and feeling a little lost, nowhere to plant his feet.

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It is Friday, and I always seem to be tired by Friday even though the week isn't really a work week for me any more. When I was working and looking after the kids, we often ordered take-away on Friday because I had no "spoons" left for preparing dinner. Of course, since covid, I haven't done take-away, although Tamar has ordered in a couple of times while we were away. As for supper tonight, I am hoping there is a can of beans for K and I, and some frozen kale. Or maybe I should break down and have a frozen pizza with brie. Maybe the rain is affecting me too. But it has been a long, long week full of grandchildren and errands, business and (distanced) visiting.

Keep well. Take from this blog the ideas that feel right for you and leave what doesn't suit. Thank you for visiting.

Mumma Yaga

Ferron, Ain't Life a Brook