Signs of Spring...sorta

Signs of Spring, sorta

While Susan and the girls where at the Monastery, my mom and me and the boys hung out around the house. I spent most of my time gimping around in pain and sucking down narcotics like jelly beans. During that time, the weather was unusually nice, which made the back issue all the more painful because I could not do much of anything around the farm.

My mom did most of the daily chores with the goats and chickens, while I helped out with some things as I could - particularly some things that I knew she would struggle with such as hauling the water containers around. Generally, I find that because the pain is different than my usual back problems that I am able to do a bit more and that once I get started and endure the initial agonizing minutes of pain that it lessens and becomes quite tolerable.

Today I notice the pain is much better, but the numbness and weakness in the right foot/leg remains unchanged, and I worry that doing too much may worsen the condition. I'm meeting with neurosurgeon on Thursday morning.

Anyway, I got off track: with the nice weather last week there were new and interesting signs of Spring really beginning to take hold around us. I still marvel at the extent to which I am more attuned to nature's signals to us. Hummingbirds are now regularly buzzing around the fully flowering bushes (Susan will have to tell you the type) in front of our house, frogs have begun their nightly chorus performance with vigor now, new sprouts of growth are see on many of the trees around us, and the days are growing longer and longer.

New life is the theme of spring and much of what we see around us exemplifies this truth to us. But it is also literally true: there are two buckets on our front porch in which the kids are "doing science" by watching the development of frog eggs taken from our seasonal wetland. They are presently little tiny tadpoles flipping around inside their gelatinous egg sacks and I expect any day to see them beginning to swim around. And of course, the goats are getting ready to kid soon. You can and feel the baby (babies?) inside Firefly, but I'm not sure about Butter yet. It's exciting and altogether fitting to see all of this FRUITION happening around us as we approach Pascha.

But a massive downpour yesterday and last night reminded us that the rainy season has not let go entirely. The mud had me reflecting upon and pining for warm Augusts to come.

And of course another sure sign of Spring is the celebration (today) of Susan's faithful exercise in asceticism for now 14 years in being my wife. I can neither remember nor imagine my life without her.