Memorial Day weekend in the country, the summer people have all descended. Folks are out walking, bicycling, boating. We went for a motorcycle ride and saw all the young city families with their well-groomed, apartment-bound kids running around, doing cartwheels (literally), splashing in the river. The most beautiful river-side homes seem to belong to city people. I felt something - not sure what exactly - as we sped by. Something akin to what you feel when you read a John Cheever story, or a James Salter novel. The elegance and sadness of privilege. The fleeting nature of joy, like a weekend.
We stopped by the nursery and J. picked out three trees: a weeping cherry, a Japanese maple, and a crab apple. He planted them all, hard work, digging into that red clay; and it makes me happy to look at them... our investment in the future, in the beauty of this piece of earth.
I planted tomato seedlings, cucumber seeds (green and yellow), zucchini and squash seeds (green and yellow), sweet basil seedlings, and the last of the lettuce and bok choy seeds. I also built the pole bean teepee. We've got a lot growing now, a lot to tend to. I should try to be here as much as possible while the plants are just budding and require lots of regular water and weeding; but the city pulls me back each week. I'll be doing a rain dance from the Bronx.
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Wow. That's a lot of planting and gardening and growing. Dave and his sibs planted a purple plum leafed tree (I think that's the name) and 3 little arborvitae for their mom on Mother's Day.
Today, we visited their dad's grave site. It was sad, as the dirt over the grave was all broken up and hardened, not even smoothed over or seeded, of course no grass. Then their mom couldn't stop complaining about all the dandelion "weeds", and she kept forgetting where his grave was. They haven't chosen a headstone yet. Ugh. Go check out the pic on my blog post. It's a nice pic, but I couldn't write the sad story except here.
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