I am finally on Spring Break! Hooray! Of course, I have made a million plans, but mostly I have spent a lot of time looking out the window. Everything is so beautiful and green! Here are some of the things I have seen, either from the window or around the hood.Here is the first robin’s egg I saw this year. I’m seeing a lot of birds, because a cardinal built her nest in a bush by my garage. It’s right at eye level, which is really cool, except that every time I get close to it, which is often, because I have to in order to get to my car, the cardinal mama gets freaked out and comes at me with her talons all sharped and her pointy beak aimed at my third eye. She hasn’t even laid her eggs yet. Can’t we all just get along?

Saw this on a walk. Sometimes it pays to leave the couch. Not only did I see natural beauty, I also got the opportunity to see the beauty in human nature.

I saw a little natural booty opportunity between two frisky squirrels in a tree in my backyard. I know this happens all the time, but think about it – have you ever actually seen those furry fellows fornicating? I thought not. The foreplay lasted forever! They did this squirrel dance that looked like a lot of roughhousing and shenanigans, and then chasing, high jinx and tail flipping, and then one of the squirrels hopped up on the other one’s back, and then…well, come to think of it, then not much happened. The man squirrel just sort of looked around and then hopped off for more whackadoodely-doo antics. Maybe he weren’t mating. Maybe he was just storing his nuts for awhile.

 This was in an alley. My eye was first caught by the weird kid size gold pompom. Go, glam! Then I noticed the woman’s business shoe – just the one, and standing at attention like it was guarding the pompom, perhaps protecting it from the puddle of urine that is just out of frame.Lots of stories here, non? I think this is a metaphor for all those happy, glitter-lovin’ kids who grow up to buy sensible shoes from Target and end up working a dead-end alley of a job, just a’pissin’ their lives away.

Of course, every spring, I’m compelled to get out into the garden, and this year is no different, except that I’m getting older and weaker. It’s getting increasingly taxing for me to haul the huge bags of organic composted soil up the slope that is my yard, and turning the red clay based dirt takes so long these days that I get frustrated and cranky. I love going to the nursery and buying all kinds of seeds and seedlings, plants and plantlets, vegetables and herbs and flowers that will come back every year or bloom brilliantly for just a short season. I buy way more than I can ever hope to get in the ground. This year: okra, 4 different kinds of eggplant, lots of different peppers (mostly hot and sassy, but some sweet or sexy, like shishito…just saying shishito is sexy…shishito…) tomato varieties, asparagus, radishes, chard, herbs, two kinds of beans, and lots of flowers. Hooray!

Congratulations to the lovely Kari on her latest flick, on to Edie for her Tony nominations!

More soon!