Garden.

My friend Ann has been posting pictures from her garden. I have several friends who are superb gardeners--my friend gilian and my oldest friend in NoCal, and Ann. They're artists and philosophers of gardens. I really admire this.

The past few years, the gardening around here has been catch-as-catch-can--we've gone hither and yon, to Idaho and back, to Scotland. This year, there have been enough work-related things that it's been hard to even recognize that we live on, you know, the earth.

That's probably the point, right? To recognize that we live on the earth and not just in and through screens. Or words or pages or whatever. In the air. Under the sky. With the dirt.

We had family over tonight, and the historian (who finished and sent off an essay last week) worked in the yard while I worked in the kitchen. Cinco de Mayo, so enchiladas. Some of my best ever, if I do say so myself. Then we ate outside.

Our yard at its best is beautiful and untidy. Right now, there's an equal proportion of both the gorgeous and the messy. We're gradually shifting the proportions. But it's May, it's spring, everything is abloom. If I weren't going to spend the next four days grading, I might think about adding some beautiful to the beautiful. But that will have to come later. For now, it's enough to just go out, breathe it in, sit out there in the evening while kids run around playing superheroes, letting the sun sink, under the apple and cherry trees full of flower.