The worms are still alive.
I can’t believe they made it through another rough weather patch in the garage, but it’s true. I’m a vermiculture hero of sorts. The Rhodes’ Colossus of red wrigglers, a giant astride my bin of tiny, silent workers. Perhaps I should’ve set out to be a worm farmer.
Nothing has died yet in my Spring-in-the-Midwest experiment; nothing except the cress attraxa I wrongfully seeded in trays. Cress attraxa is a fancy word for grass/weeds. They were the first to sprout in my basement and the first to die there. I fancy myself a grow-florist of sorts, but now I’m convinced that bouquet “filler” is ridiculous. “Filler” is for the worry wart who needs reliability in her life. Give me spontaneity. All one really needs is a five-year-old with a mason jar.
Gretty and I are in wonderment at the surprising earliness of Spring. Two mornings ago when she popped out of bed her first question was, “Did any flowers come up?”
I assured her that flowers would eventually come up, but not necessarily on the first day of spring.
Was I wrong! Spring faithfully opened her generous arms and gave us our first daffodil bouquet. We have never felt so lucky. Our neighbor has a thousand daffodils growing in his ditch already, but we didn’t know we had our own patch.
I have a tallied list going in my mind, weighing the pros and cons of Colorado mountains versus Ozark hills and I can’t quite measure stark beauty against liveliness. Dry-and-arid is a different glory than bursting-with-life. Are terrible allergies worth a rainbow of colors and fragrances? Was hiking in canyon ruins in January and a backyard full of goatheads better than backyard tulips and ticks in March? Maybe, just maybe. And maybe not.
Always in my mind is My Antonia by Willa Cather–
There was only–spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind–rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted.
Speaking of that warm, high wind: Do NOT burn around the pond on such puppy dog days of Spring. (Is a picture worth a thousand words? We’re all fine and the barn is still standing.)
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