Today there are clouds overhead. Large, puffy, moving fast clouds, promising rain later today. The wind is puffing along too. Earlier I was out in front cleaning up the gardens. I love this time of year: the preparation for the new growth; the hauling away of all the yellow and brown detritus of winterkill; the earth still wet from the months of snow, smelling rich and deep, the green of things held close to the ground as though waiting for the full warmth to come.
The gophers are clearly happy too, their tunneling visible above ground all over the yard, in my vegetable garden, in the back field. It being spring I have not the bile up yet to curse them. All the daffodils I had planted to shoo them away–having read that they hate daffodils–are either the wrong kind, or I bought a myth instead of a fact. But again, it being spring, I delight in their resumption of life like everything else.
In the intensely blue sky, far above, ravens play. First they flap into the wind then let themselves be taken, sliding off fast over a huge distance. Once in a while I hear one of them call out in that hoarse, throaty rasp of theirs. The wind almost blows it away.
I will not be painting until the garden cleanup is complete. Alvaro is working on poetry and music, also not at this time painting. But we are both taking it all in, it being this magnificence we live within and one of these days, that accumulation will have to come out. Happy Spring!
