Beautiful Spring Morning

It’s a beautiful spring morning here in central Nebraska!! We received about a ½” of gentle rain last night. There is a moderate breeze blowing but that is nothing unusual for this part of the country, seems like we have a breeze or wind 5 out of 7 days. We didn’t receive a lot of moisture during the winter so the rain is really welcome. The farmers are almost all done planting corn and soybeans; they got a late start due to a cold spring. Seems like the seasons are a month or 2 off from what they use to be years ago, we get our worse snows in February and March now compared to December and January but we also don’t get the first frost until late October instead of early October or late September like when I was a kid, so the growing season stays the same.

When I stepped outside at 9:00 this morning for a serenity break I was greeted by the chorus of birds. A mixture of Blackbirds, Sparrows, Robins and Morning Doves singing and flying around, landing on the high wires, the chain link fence or on the ground. To north of our building is a small alfalfa field, yesterday they disked ground, turned the soil with steel disk placed at an angle, I watched as the birds moved in and out of the fresh soil looking for food, should have been plenty of juicy earth worms close to the surface. This is the joy of being able to step outside, inside is a world of anger and blame, outside is peace and harmony, the birds fulfilling their role in the world without emotion or undo selfishness.

Another thing this morning was the smells after the rain, freshness and promises. The weed flowers are in full bloom, dandelions and the small purple flowers whose name I don’t know. Dandelions can be a pain and take over manicured lawns but to me they are beautiful in the spring, they are one of the first flowers to appear, bright yellow, miniature suns shining up from the ground. The Bleeding Heart I planted last year is small but full of awesome flowers. A couple of my rose plants don’t look to healthy, I gave them some special food and hopefully they will pull out of it. I like my flowers, it is the androgynous part of me, that and cooking.

Last night was down right gorgeous, I started building a shed in late September and was ¾ finished when winter hit, last night with the help of my daughters boyfriend I finished everything but painting it, the boyfriend was a huge help since the last thing I had to do was build and hang the door. The door was the reason I procrastinated on finishing the shed also, I am not a carpenter, I know the general concepts and can make do, but nothing is square or level and I know the door would take more skill and thinking than the basic framing and I was right. My first door was wrong so I had to saw the 2x4’s off 2” and move them in to allow for the existing frame, no biggie I pretty much expected difficulties and told Matt this, thank God for power tools!! The door measures 4ft by 6ft so Matt was a big help when it came time to hang it and make some minor modifications and position the hinges. While we were working I told Matt about my dad. My dad may have not been the smartest man when it came to intellectual knowledge, but the man had a mountain of mechanical knowledge, not the engineering kind but carpentry, automotive, electrical, plumbing, heating and the like. Dad gave me his favorite power tool when he accepted the fact that he would never use it again, this tool was a reciprocating saw. Last night had to get the reciprocating saw out for one of the modifications and laughed as I told Matt about my old man and the saw, my dad could use the saw modify holes for plumbing piping or saw through old steel pipes so he could run new PVC plumbing, I can use the tool but with no where near the precision dad did, but then again dad used the saw constantly for 25 years. When I eulogized my dad one of the things I talked about was his mechanical aptitude and how I wish I would have inherited more of it, this aptitude is far more valuable in every day life than being able to comprehend ideas, theories and philosophies, funny thing is though that dad was proud that his kids all have above average intelligence. He would get short with my brother because he lacks common sense and is too lazy to use what aptitude he has but he would also say my brother was the smartest one of us but it also made him sad that my brother never put his intelligence to good use. As much as working class hero that dad was he really didn’t want to see his kids have to spend their lives doing manual labor to make ends meet. Yeah the old man was a paradox some times.

Well this started out a post about a special spring morning and the wonders of nature and turned into reminiscence about my dad. My dad may have left this world physically but he is still standing beside me in spirit when I look for him.