I just walked downstairs and caught Ford dipping his grubby little fingers into the cake batter. Notice that he doesn’t look spooked or guilty. He’s not trying to hide a thing.

I’m stuck in a Saturday sandwich, between competing layers of Close Encounters (with commentary from Damon) upstairs and Ira Glass downstairs, under the leaden weight of a sleeping Chas on my lap and the beaming sun on my shoulders. There are pressing obsessions on my laptop: a map of museums and our morning itenerary that’s now past due. But the house is now clean, and the smell of freshly sliced limes is creeping across the kitchen countertop.

I cut my finger pruning today, I was so eagerly (and glovelessly!) trimming the garden in the front yard and it was especially dangerous with Chas underfoot. Nothing serious, just a battle scar, a merit badge for my work. It felt invigorating to trim the seeded grasses and the long, thin dead stalks off the perennials; not unlike the liberation I feel whenever I have a thorough haircut and bound out of the salon, leaving piles of medium blonde locks on the floor behind me staring up at the ceiling like fish beached after a red tide.

I was surprised to find tiny green veins thriving inside much of last summer’s dried stalks. Seeing this as I explored each plant gave me all the hope I needed to dream of starting another garden this Spring with the kids. I thought of the new book I bought myself for Christmas, still waiting for me to put it to use: Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy. Not for lack of inspiration, I bought the book to validate my eccentric enthusiasm about growing gnome-infested theme gardens and cultivating what land we’ve got to best use. Thinking of ideas, I took all the clippings and reduced them further, sprinkling them over the soil like little golden confetti.

While I dream of having another vegetable garden, we don’t have the means to create a large plot. We haven’t enough graded, sunshine-filled yard or protection from the deer and we sure don’t have the backhoe we’d need to cultivate a righteous bed atop the kaliche. But we have the perfect woods for little surprises, and a corridor between the house and the forest for a fragrant moonlight garden path (we had a resident bat last year). There’s room for a teepee, and I already purchased the heavenly blue morning glories for the tarp, and Mexican Sunflowers to play off the blue and create a haven for swallowtails. In fact, I am thinking of planting the entire meadow beside the driveway in a swath of yellows and white, a sort of homecoming parade.

As far as our land goes (where we are building, down the road), I still have to research rainwater harvesting, although I’ve been putting this off knowing full well that I’ll need a couple thousand to build a cistern, irrigation system and fence. Thinking ahead to another long hot summer, shopping for new fridge easily trumps those plans.

What more can I say? The kid just rocks. And he’s got it all figured out.

A giant live oak tree stood in arabesque on the hill above the creek, a proud centenarian but with arms so long and weary they dug back down into the earth for relief. While the sun sank behind it without saying goodbye, as it does on these arid, cloudless days, Ford and Chas cavorted among the branches. Ford wanted to climb higher than possible, satisfying each inch up the tree with laughter and a hearty jump back down. Chas, for his part, interested himself mostly with the mulch around the base, a dusty combination of dead leaves, acorn bits, bird guano and the small particulates of decomposing plastic gelato spoons from the chi chi grocery store nearby. I cringed as he faced the wind, gleamed with joy and flung a handful of detritus into his face by accident. Mycoplasma, Avian flu, corneal scratches buzzing through my head while Ford demanded “Look at me now, Mommy! Look, Mommy! Mommy, look at me!” I quickly scan Chas, while Ford hops back down to the ground.

No harm done, no tears. Ford looks back up at the heart of the tree, a perfect vortex of boughs and tailored for sitting, tempered and rounded from a century of children. He turns to me with raised eyebrows, and asks me to lift him up to the top. I remind him of my jammed thumb, my short height, and promise that Daddy can help him up next time. A couple walks by, the man understands Ford’s gesturing without hearing a word. I tell Ford that I approve, the man can help lift him up to the top of the trunk. As the man lifts him, I watch every ounce of Ford’s enthusiasm diminish instantly in proportion to height. Tenatively, the man releases his hold on Ford, and enables him feel his presence atop the grand oak, above our heads. Perched so high, he claws that trunk like a castaway cat riding dark seas. While his eyes help round out the terror, his voice says it all, as he quivers his shaky plea,
“mommy can you please get me down?”

Friday at Bull Creek. Cattails.

Scientists.

Philosopher.

Thrill seeker. (Fording the frigid stream in mocassins)

Considering Botox.

Week 2 in Personal History series.
Is there a child that isn’t immediately enchanted with her first visit to the beach?
I have this fantasy that I will live another life that I can completely devote to the study of echinoderms.

More SPT bloggers here.

Two to twenty seconds is all I have, at each chance, to capture a slice of toddlerhood on paper. I grab one of their washable markers and chubby brushes off the lawn and just go at it. He is distracted by the sprinkler system, I am distracted from the endless cleanup that follows him. Mutual satisfaction. Alas, only two gestures and he’s clawing at my brush, pen and paper; his own isn’t good enough.