I slept till 5:30--very unusual for a Monday, but T has an appointment this morning before work and I reaped the benefits of not having to leap up before the crack of day.

The temperature is mild--above freezing with a whiff of melt in the air. Yesterday we basked in the 50s, and I spent a couple of hours in the yard, doing first-day-of-spring jobs: cleaning out garden boxes, setting up the cold frame, planting spinach; then picking up sticks, pruning roses, and tearing out the big broken rose trellis that blew over in one of our winter hurricanes. I checked spring growth. Much of the kale had wintered over, so I pruned back the dead leaves. I admired the garlic shoots and the green onions and the first snowdrop. Daffodils and hyacinths are up, and the scylla is starting to poke through. A few tulip leaves have appeared. Buds are swelling on the trees, and cardinals are romancing in the hedges.

It felt wonderful to be out and about on my little homestead. I'm longing to rake out garden beds and pin shirts to the line. I always get drunk on spring air. And then I always do something foolish, like plant too early or hang out sheets in the snow. Apparently I will never learn.

For the moment, I'm pleased to have a slow Monday-morning start, but soon I'll have to fork myself off this couch and into my workday. I've got editing to finish, class planning to start, stacks of contest books to read. I've got laundry to fold, laundry to hang on the cellar lines, wood boxes to fill, errands to run, meals to plan, poems to revise. Last night we ate lamb patties packed with garlic and onions and a fistful of my own dried herbs. We ate wild rice and roasted cabbage and marinated tomatoes and fresh raspberry sorbet. Tonight, who knows? Anything could happen . . . fish, lentils, omelets . . .  

I'm fizzy about spring. I'm fizzy about poems. I'm fizzy about the thought of placing my manuscript with a publisher and about not having to be on the road this week. I am like a cardinal in a hedge, hopping among twigs, singing my tunes, extolling the perfections of nests and eggs. Of course, this is before the cat shows up.