It's Spring!

So, what have we been doing lately?

My wife has been spending the last few days mostly engaged in the transplantation of seedlings. As for me, I took a bit of a break from yard work today (although I did manage to get the lawnmower started and the lawn mowed). I like to think about such things philosophically as it avoids having to label myself as a slacker.

Thus, breaks are helpful and they do allow you to appreciate certain things… and so, today I appreciated poetry. Consider, for example this portion of Ode to Spring written by Mary Robinson in the late eighteen century:

Life-glowing season ! odour-breathing Spring !
Deck'd in cerulean splendours !–vivid,–warm,
Shedding soft lustre on the rosy hours,
And calling forth their beauties ! balmy Spring !
To thee the vegetating world begins
To pay fresh homage. Ev'ry southern gale
Whispers thy coming;–every tepid show'r
Revivifies thy charms. The mountain breeze
Wafts the ethereal essence to the vale,
While the low vale returns its fragrant hoard
With tenfold sweetness. When the dawn unfolds
Its purple splendours 'mid the dappled clouds,
Thy influence cheers the soul. When noon uplifts
Its burning canopy, spreading the plain
Of heaven's own radiance with one vast of light,
Thou smil'st triumphant ! Ev'ry little flow'r
Seems to exult in thee, delicious Spring,
Luxuriant nurse of nature ! By the stream,
That winds its swift course down the mountain's side,
Thy progeny are seen;–young primroses,
And all the varying buds of wildest birth,
Dotting the green slope gaily. On the thorn,
Which arms the hedge-row, the young birds invite
With merry minstrelsy, shrilly and maz'd
With winding cadences; now quick, now sunk
In the low twittered song.

… and now, here are a few pictures that capture the essence of our current gardening efforts: