Oh March, she's such a cruel mistress, taking me in with her promises of spring and leading me on with her daylight savings and dripping eaves. And then dumping four inches of snow in my backyard. Tsk tsk. I think winter and summer are colluding to elbow spring out of the mix entirely. Fortunately most of that snow has melted in the past few days, but during the depths of the spring snowstorm I started my pepper seeds, and yesterday I put the tomatoes in too. The earthy smell of the seed starting medium is like an antipyretic to my cabin fever. You go a little crazy all cooped up inside, microwaving your tea all day without actually drinking it until you finally just pour it over ice the next day, making sure newly-sitting baby noggins ain't hitting the floor, and trying to decide if baby clothes are so small that they don't really need to be folded, exactly.

Today promises 54 degrees, and if it delivers I hope to get outside and seed poppies and spinach. Its hard to imagine it will be green so soon, but out like a lamb right?

(1. Farm fresh eggs, every morning. 2. Solo cutie tea party. 3. My new tea love - tastes like weeding the garden in July. 4. Tulips - pretending spring is here already! 5. Alan's 30th birthday gift on friday - I made him a calendar with a different herb for each month.)

Pictures have been totally random and disconnected. I know. My vision and intentions for this space are always changing, always growing with me. I don't fully remember my thoughts when I initially decided to start this venture, but I do remember at some point during the first year feeling like the blog controlled me rather than the other way around, and at that point I gave myself permission to always let it be whatever I needed it to be at any given time. I come here to preserve memories, to keep myself creative and to share ideas, and to connect and find community. I've been doing this for some 2.5 years or so now! I hope this place has matured with me and continues to reflect me as I grow and settle into my own self. The last several days and weeks have found me doing a lot of verbal (and maybe embarassingly angsty) processing with Alan about my life, usually while I pace around the kitchen and do a decent amount of dramatic hand-gesturing. I jokingly call it a quarter-life crisis, it's really a stirring in my gut, a longing for. . .? I'm not sure? To understand where I fit, what I'm good at, what I want to accomplish? Maybe I'm just restless! Alan says this happens to me every February. I don't remember, but he might be right. Perhaps I just need some fresh air. Or perhaps every February it just gets so absolutely dead and quiet that I'm forced to process my life just a little bit more, in a two month chunk every year. Anyways, as I was waxing on about these things Alan gently reminded me that I'm a mother, and sometimes that is enough. It was a good reminder that I certainly needed. I am not a mother only, but neither am I "only" a mother. In the midst of finding myself thinking, I have no legacy! What will it be? I am reminded that my children are just that. I have other passions, other goals, and perhaps I will be remembered for other things as well, but I refuse to accept that voice that says that the work of being a mother is somehow "less than", or that children are not a worthy legacy. I'm not the first to say this, but since I still struggle with feeling it, perhaps it needed repeating.

So that is where my mind has been, in this deepest, darkest end of winter, and I am finding beauty in snapshots, which is being reflected here. I can hardly believe that in 4 months time this space will be bursting forth with verdant garden pictures, and surely my heart and mind will bend into summer and this space will be just what I need and will reflect that, too.