7QT: Spring in the Neighborhood Edition

1. The last day of April brought the only April shower that wasn't followed by piles of snow. And yet, the May flowers have prevailed!

2. I have been busy outside, planting, dividing, weeding, anything to get dirt under my nails once more.

It's much more difficult to find time with a toddler and a nine month old, but gardening is by far my favorite past-time and I am determined to find a way to continue even while the kids are young. I'm slowly figuring out ways to adapt my habits, and my expectations, to account for frequent interruptions ("Sprout, you are not a worm, stop eating dirt! No, you're not a worm. You can pretend to be a worm, but then you need to pretend to eat dirt.") and little helping hands.

I have several plant orders showing up in the next couple weeks and I am resigning myself to the fact that it will probably take a while to get them all in their settled places. My plan is to pop the flowers into pots to give the roots some breathing room while I work out where they'll all end up. The biggest lesson I learned last year is that garden soil and potting soil are not interchangeable and hopefully my container plants will survive, and even hopefully thrive, this year.

3. At Christmas we pass out little tins of cookies and fudge and the first year it clearly took people by surprise. Apparently people don't really do that anymore. One neighbor responded with an apology for not giving us anything that year, another stopped by with a plate of cookies and an air of annoyance that they "had" to reciprocate, and one was so touched by the simple gesture that we found a beautiful fruit basket and heartfelt thank you note on our porch the next day.

Eric and I talk a lot about ways to build community and authentic friendships, and this is a small way that we've chosen to reach out to our neighbors in an effort to foster friendly relationships, or even actual friendships. And so we passed out cookie tins again the next year, and are hoping to slowly make neighborly gestures a bit less surprising.

4. With that in mind, I found this idea for May Day baskets and decided to make a few for our neighbors. I made a dozen total and Sprout very helpfully pulled them along in his little wagon as we distributed them across the alley and down the block.

I am a decided introvert, with a true dread of small talk, and although I want to do my bit in the fostering of a kind, neighborly community, I set about delivering the May Day baskets with a terrible fear of running into any of the recipients. It turns out that delivering twelve baskets while carrying a baby and trying to guide the toddler-pulled wagon without upsetting the flower pots not only takes time, but is stressful even without a dread of potential small talk. By the time we got home I was shaking so badly I had to sit down for a while and decompress.

But the baskets were delivered, received, and hopefully brought a little bit of joy to the neighborhood!

5. If you're interested in building community, putting down roots, celebrating family values, and rediscovering the importance of Tradition, give this interview a read. I hadn't heard of Wrath of Gnon before, and am very glad to have been introduced! Eric and I read the interview together and were inspired by the simple and fundamentally important ideas presented there.

To be self-sustainable is not about growing your own potatoes and generating your own electricity, it is to provide a shared framework for belief and beauty: “Make your communities and towns lovely and lovable, for without love, who will they inspire to fight for them?” Unless you have that shared goal, not all the solar panels in the world will save you.

6. We don't live in a particularly walkable area, and what we can walk to is mostly up or down some pretty large hills, but this summer I am hoping to take advantage of what is near by and start building a habit of staying more local during the week. We have a small but beautiful library, a wonderful taco place, an inexpensive coffee shop, and a brew-pub all within a few blocks and I too often take them for granted or forget about them altogether.

Last week I surprised Eric with an impromptu date night. Or as an impromptu as an out-of-the-house date night can be with small children. His parents came over last minute to babysit and we walked down the hill to the taco house and then settled down at the brew-pub to eat our tacos accompanied by a Jalapeño Cream Ale. I found a list of date night questions and we took turns asking each other what our ideal room would look like or what skill we'd want to master if time and money were not an issue. We walked home laughing and reconnected, pausing every so often for a kiss, feeling like a couple young kids in love.

7. This afternoon we get to witness the wedding of one of my closest friends to a wonderful man and we are looking forward to celebrating the beginning of their marriage and reliving the butterflies of our own special day as they meet at the end of the aisle.

Find more quick takes here, and May your Day be filled with Joy!