Ostara

Spring is slowly, slowly creeping into the corners of northeast Ohio. It’s been a long winter and even the tiniest sliver of sunlight fills me with anticipation; and today there’s not even one cloud in the sky! I’m skipping lunch and I’m going for a run, reuniting with the kid I used to be, the one who would spend the entire recess at Prospect doing back flips on the big double slide. Play time!

And also, I bought a guitar over the weekend… (Rock star photos to follow.)

This weekend Patrick and I finally raked the entire back yard, and deposited the accumulated mass of leaves into our newly built compost structure. I have never seen as muddy a back yard as I saw on Saturday. Shame on us! Our punishment for putting off the task for the entire winter is that now we’ll have to plant grass seed. (Which needed to be done anyway.)

But, the leaves had already begun to decompose. Even through the freezing cold. Some of them were translucent, some of them looked as if they had been petrified, there were big fat earthworms and seedpods from the few sweet gum trees. At the end of the raking I was exhausted and instead of using the shovel to move the piles upon piles of leaves I plunged my hands in, and moved fistfuls. The smell was amazing; it was wet and earthy and dark and like thick roots dug up and covered with Ohio clay. And reminded me of the forest on Evergreen’s campus, and the path to the Organic Farm.

I think I might form an Open Spaces Coalition of my own.