Outdoors

Gathering my thoughts

Well, Naturalistas, it’s been a busy week!  I haven’t had much time to gather my thoughts around my heritage, but I have spent some time in nature—which, in its own way, does connect to my heritage.  The change in seasons has taken me to the great outdoors.

Growing up, we spent a lot of time outdoors—especially in the spring and summer.  Today, I’m just going to touch on some of the things that I’ve done this week, and then show you how this connects to my heritage in my June 19th blog.

Photo by Markus Spiske/Unsplash

This week’s activities were made possible by preparations that I started back in early March.  That’s when I started prepping the soil in my outdoor garden and seeding my summer vegetables indoors (in pots and trays).  I planted tomato, cucumber, yellow and zucchini squash, basil, green bean, garden pea, watermelon, and cantaloupe seeds.  I put the pots on a table in my front window, which gets a lot of daytime sunlight.  I also covered the pots with a “tent” of cellophane—causing a greenhouse-like effect.  This week, I tended to the plants produced by these seeds, which I had already transplanted to my outside garden a couple weeks ago.

We have a little garden,

A garden of our own.

And every day we water there

The seeds that we have sown.

We love our little garden,

And tend it with such care,

You will not find a faded leaf

Or blighted blossom there.

                 ~Beatrix Potter

Also, this week, at the suggestion of my co-worker, I acquired two hummingbird feeders, which I hung in my yard—one in the front, and one in the back.  The front feeder is visible from my office window; which offers me some sense of tranquility while teleworking.  The other is just outside of my back patio which I can see from the french door in my family room.  From these two vantage points, I can watch for the whirring wings of the occasional tiny visitors, almost anytime.

Like thoughts that flit across the mind,

Leaving no lasting trace behind,

The humming-bird darts to and fro,

Comes, vanishes before we know.

(excerpted from “The Humming-Bird” by Jones Very)

In addition to bird-watching and tending to my fledgling garden, I also took on the most daunting outdoor task of the week—raising and re-setting a small paver-patio, in my front garden area.  I call this task “daunting,” not only because of the heavy paver stones and bags of sand that I had to lift, but also because the two days, from which I carved out morning and evening hours to work on the project, were the HOTTEST days of the season thus far—95 and 91 degrees, respectively!!!  Well, the patio is mostly done, and so am I!  I’m worn out!—but, it was worth it.

The “mostly done” patio.

Don’t forget to continue checking in, as I will follow up to this blog on June 19th, with a special blog about how this connects to my heritage.