The Poetry Of Earth Is Never Dead

This is a line from Keats' poem, On the Grasshopper and Cricket, and how true it is!  We are having a gem of a day weather-wise and it's hard to be at work, inside on a day like this.  I'm longing for my garden and just biding my time until I get there.  It's been a very cold Spring, and though my garden has been planted for a while, without the sun and heat, not a lot of growth has happened yet.  Ditto for my indoor seed program, but perhaps we're turning a corner here and it's finally warming up.  Either way, I am getting out there today and there's so much to do!  Spring is the time to do the work, amending the soil, planting, weeding, and by the middle of summer, there's not much to do but get in the hammock and enjoy it. 

I am a big believer in hammocks.  I have one, courtesy of my dad, that hangs from a metal stand. It's portable and convenient to set up.  I plop a feather bed and a quilt on it, add a pillow, a book, a little blue sky and it's heaven.  All this lovely work I'm doing in the garden now will pay off this summer during Hammock Time (which is sorta like Hammer Time, but without the big pants and gold chains). 

So, today I'll transplant some calendula seedlings, throw down some zinnia, nasturtium, and sunflower seeds, move my hollyhocks outside to harden off, thin out my lettuce and spinach, and mound up a little more dirt on my potatoes.  If the weather is warm enough, I'll celebrate this poetry of the earth with a nice lime-studded G & T on the porch afterwards, and maybe even read a little Keats!