Saturday night's gig turned out to be wonderful--a warm, easygoing, affectionate, elegiac show involving multiple musicians and combinations . . . lots of hanging out with people I've known for a long a time, plus the pleasure of meeting new people in an environment of friendly seriousness--by which I mean we all took our performances seriously but without any sort of bustling aggressive "I'm better than you" crap.

But I was completely exhausted when I got home, and ended up lying on the couch dozing and reading the New Yorker for much of the afternoon, until finally I pitchforked myself up and outside and starting digging up the front lawn.

Eventually the whole lawn will be under cultivation, but first I have to turn over all of the sod. After a year without a garden my digging muscles are somewhat atrophied, so I'm trying to take it slow. But the ground, even this early in March, is completely thawed, and the soil has few rocks and roots--unlike my Harmony garden, which year after year erupted in brand-new boulders. This morning I woke up to discover that the fresh patch of soil is now coated in snow, but that doesn't matter as I won't be planting anything for several weeks yet. The task now is to see how much of this space I can spade before I need to turn my thoughts to seeds.

Here's a photo looking down the street, away from my house. I realize it probably just looks like a patch of dirt to you, but to me it feels like so much more.