Now that our backyard has reached C- status (up from F, as you'll recall), I actually look forward to spending time out there. It's always had beautiful dappled shade when the maples are in leaf; and now it also has a semblance of grass, a few pretty plantings, a hammock, and a fire pit. (I also count the woodpile and the clothesline as attractions, though I understand that most people might not.) So yesterday, after I finished mowing and trimming, and after the boys drove away on their shopping expedition, I brought out a tray of ice tea, fresh guacamole, and tortilla chips, along with two novels and my laptop, and I set myself up for a few hours of lonesome bliss . . . reading, sipping, beginning to suss out a poem possibility, a little more reading, a few minutes in the hammock staring into the trees, a little more writing, a little more reading . . .  Then, after a while, I decided to transplant some Siberian iris into a couple of backyard beds; and I did a little watering, and little socializing with my neighbor; and then, after a while, the boys came home and brought their lunch outside, and we sat around companionably, in the small breeze, under the shifting new leaves, as fingers of sunlight gilded the unfolding ferns.

There are so many things to fix out there: no deck, such much blank space, a disastrous shed, leaning fences, not enough chairs and tables, glaring evidence of tarps, compost bins, leaf pile, wheelbarrow. Nonetheless, what was desert has become habitation.

Today will be another beauty of a day. Already the temperature's in the mid-50s, and I should get off this couch and go put a load of clothes into the washing machine, so they have time to dry outside. I hope to work a bit more on my incipient poem . . . which is really more of a "will this even be a poem? or am I fooling myself?" situation. I do have to run out to the plant nursery and buy another pepper plant, as a squirrel decided to massacre one of my seedlings.

Sudden death in spring is always part of the story.