Spring springs, then swarms

Tax time again - during the best part of spring--PL

 Easter, taxes, yard work, more yard work, tax deadline, impending trips, chapter revisions—you who longed for spring for so long (ahem), I hope you are not in the same predicament. Of course, all gardeners are deep into dirt.
 

I’m deep into a ‘do-it-yourself’ project: a sidewalk from the front porch to street-side’s mail and paper boxes. I saw a beautiful example last year on social media (FB) and shared it. It would take too many precious minutes to locate it again, so I’ve used what materials I have, plus river pebbles and several stepping stones from Home Depot. [photo on my FB page]
 

It will replace the mere stepping-stone path I put down several years ago, which stones have either sunk into the grass, or broken in the weather extremes. The hardest part of the new project is digging out the lawn grass so it won’t overtake THIS venture. About a sixth of the way done, I’m hoping to have it finished by July 4. This year.
 

Another area I want to make into a faux patio has undergone much cleaning of broad leafs --not counting the mullein pinks  which I call lamb’s ears-- and the addition of 3 small red azaleas (4 for $10 at Home Depot). The only thing potentially untoward is if the neighbors moving into the house south of me are noisy. Bird noise I covet, but please, no human racket.
 

Speaking of noise, wait till the subdivision to be built on the north is inhabited in its projected 120 lots. Maybe I’ll have to build a privacy fence on all four sides!
 

Then there’s taxes—mine and Kid Billy’s. I decided to join the crowd and do them online. Bad idea! It asks questions I don’t know the answers to—like specific sales of investments during the year. When the IRS quit printing out the instruction booklet, they failed us who can read and who can at least attempt to do our own taxes.
 

The federal tax online workup is free, but the state one costs from $12-$20. No fair! If it says "free," then it should be free.
 

Easter Day is history, but in liturgical churches, the season of Eastertide lasts until Pentecost. We don’t just exult for one spring day that Christ is risen—but celebrate throughout several more weeks, until the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit.
 

This Easter day is only the second time in my life that I didn’t attend church on this high day. Oh, I was GOING to—to Zion Lutheran in Avilla with my widowed aunt, whose granddaughter’s wedding I played several weeks ago. But with two evenings of hefty yard work plus the cold wind hitting my ears all that time, I just KNEW I’d be ‘stove up’ on Sunday morning, so I called the night before and begged off.
 

That morning, I felt no painful results of my labor (thank you Lord), so I sat on the porch swing and meditated in a one-person sunrise service. As I told a friend, the crows were my brass, the robins, flutes, woodpeckers provided percussion and the doves cooed arias of hope. The ubiquitous wind was worshipfully quiet.
 

 

May your wintertime dreams of spring projects become realities—at least by summertime.

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