Sure Signs

It's strange. This is the winter that wasn't yet I am so glad to be seeing the back of it. The light has changed here on the coast of Maine and the wind is blowing warmly. We're starting up our regular walks again, thank goodness. Blueberry, Buttercup and I are all cabin-feverish and want to kick up our heels in true spring-coltish fashion (though only Blueberry really does).

Everywhere we look there are signs of spring. Mud, for starters. We are definitely in cummings' "Just-/ spring when the world is mud-/ luscious."

Blueberry likes to yell her favorite lines from "The Hippopotamus Song,"

Mud, mud, glorious mud
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood
So follow me follow down to the hollow
And there let me wallow in glorious mud (!!!)

while stomping about in puddles and squishing her rubber-boot clad feel deep into the dark mud. No wonder spring is affectionately known as mud season hereabouts.



We're drying everything outside -- clothes, sheets, diapers. There is nothing better than the smell of line-dried sheets when you crawl into bed at night.

I made a birthday dress for my almost five year old girl!

Blueberry's birthday always falls the day or two before the vernal equinox, so the fact that I'm searching for playsilks and gardening tools to give her and planning cupcakes and creating paper toys must mean that spring is close!


Buttercup really wants to walk.




She will no doubt be taking her first steps in early spring. This seems so entirely fitting. I have visions of us working in the garden and watching her toddle over to watch us planting peas. Reminds me of one of my favorite Van Gogh's.

(First Steps, After Millet)

Now we will be transformed. Turn the inside out, our faces to the sun, crawl out of the cave and sweep the last of winter's clutter out the door. Mama having the energy to clean the house with 30 pounds of beautiful breastfed baby strapped her back? That's a sure sign.

Pumpkin "Festibal"

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
-- Henry David Thoreau

It may seem overly quaint, almost too preciously New England-y for a town on the coast of Maine to hold a Pumpkin Fest every year in October. It is, a bit, but strangely, it's also fun, amusing, and wonderful to have an entire town turn itself upside-down for a field-grown vegetable, er, fruit. (Berry, actually? Really?) I do enjoy seeing the pumpkin turned into art and decoration around town...

Here's the fun part. It's not just prettily carved and painted pumpkins. It's also giant pumpkins made into boats captained by foolhardy but admirable locals...

(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Or my sweet Blueberry's ultimate favorite event...

(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Yup. Giant pumpkins smashing into old cars. Awesome. Seriously, that is why we go to Pumpkin fest. It's fun to walk around town, admiring the handiwork of our friends and neighbors upon the bulbous berries of late fall, eat unctuous pumpkin donuts and drink cider, perhaps do a little showing off of our own sweet pumpkinhead...

Or play a little Pumpkin Plinko...

... but at the end of the day it's all about giant pumpkins smashing into old cars.