Oh Heavenly Day

Before I left for Wyoming, ten days ago, I planted three pumpkin seedlings and hoped for gentle sun and easy rains. Felt, in fact, as if I was abandoning my children to the elements. (My actual children [my flesh and skin and blood and bone children who are actually now young men and flourish in the absence of their sole parent] barely noticed my departure. In fact, I received a text from Reilly: "stocked up on alcohol". Ah, the joy of being 21....) But I digress.....it seems that my lettuce thrived the ten days I was gone; we enjoyed the first modest harvest in our salad bowl at dinner last night. But, alas, my dear sweet pumpkins have waned. Slugs have feasted on the tender leaves, and they appear to be stuck in perpetual seedling-hood. Will tomorrow's predicted eighty-five degrees shock them into a new leaf or two?

The cats have been following me around all morning, each in his/her own territorial patch of sun. As the earth turns, and the eastern sun rises higher and the sunny spots on the carpet grow smaller, a battle ensues for the last remaining bits of sunlight. Tip just muscled tiny and elderly Alice from her allotment, where he now luxuriously lounges, fat-belly-up, paws and legs outstretched in some nouveau feline yoga pose. I think cats invented yoga. He's meditating.

Oh heavenly chicadees and robins and Stellar's jays and sparrows and finches and apple trees all leafed out and daisies in bloom and purple rhododendrons and Pat-and-Mary's-pine-tree and pale blue sky and Candy-in-her-pajamas-across-the-street-tending-her-garden and gentle breeze and the red fuzz of new kiwi shoots and the shiny green of new grape leaves and orange poppies that last only a day and forget-me-nots and even the mounds of laundry awaiting me in the basement -- all glorious, all holy.