It’s spring.  Winter was quick and easy but early spring was long and cold.  Mark broke his back on Anna Kate’s birthday and is just now up and around, contemplating a return to work.   Our farm is ever changing and growing and we are now milking a cow and caring for two old dogs who probably won’t see the end of summer.  Lambs bound in out and of fences that their mamas are trapped in and cats toss dead rats up and up and up again hoping for a little more play before they eat.  We break ground in a garden that right now is terrifyingly large but will barely feed the eight ravenous people this house holds.  The moon ambles up full occasionally, so bright the kids can’t sleep for three days.  A 29 day tradition that I still love/hate after spending years trying to block out the ever glowing streetlights of town life.

Iver sits and scoots and stretches still trying to find his knees.  The girls pack him around and steal him from my bed in the mornings so they can play with him until he belly laughs.  His hands rhythmically pinch me while he eats.  Sometimes he’ll rest his head on my chest for a few seconds while I hold him before it pops up again to look at who just spoke or moved or bellowed.

My muscles are tired at the end of the day after gardening and walking to the barn and back again.  Over and over.  It’s the temperature where our faces are brown and cheeks glowing but our bodies are white.  Our skin not quite able to brave the cold wind.  We itch for the ocean.

The robins are nesting in our great big fir tree.  High enough the cats don’t dare try.