I woke up this morning to the realization that I have done nothing – nothing in the past two weeks.  Sitting in my house, in the company of dogs most of the time, with my days defined by taking them out, bringing them in, feeding them.  The goats and chickens also have their own time schedule but I combine them all.  I return to the house and am obsessed by the news – the radio mostly to hear someone talk.  I have meetings online for work but have been essentially immobilized by – anxiety.  I’m not afraid but anxious, more that fear of the unknown.  I work for the town Board of Health so I have been busy in a team that is working diligently to keep our residents informed, safe and calm.  Our demographic skews to the aging side, more retirees than not and we have had many volunteers step up to help those that are sheltering in place.  I can’t express my gratitude for living in a community where we know everyone’s name and care for every single one of them.  It may be in the background for so many of them but every  resident has been touched in those meetings.

It has been looking like spring but March never really turns out quite the way you think it will.  We had 8 inches of snow on an otherwise bare landscape at the beginning of the week.  This morning is warm and bright and the animals are ready to spend their days in the sunshine.  The ground is still too frozen to fence in the hens and I really do fear for their safety with every predator in the world coming out into the sunshine as well, and hungry.

I took a walk around the back forty and stopped at the bench to look at the beaver pond.  We have a family of ducks that we get glimpses of early in the morning.  I haven’t seen them up close but am assuming they are Mergansers as they were here last year as well (but I still dream of Wood ducks taking up residence).  I saw a woodcock do his little dance this week and I know that spring is arriving just by the sounds of the birds.  It changes.  You hear birds you didn’t know you missed until you hear them again.  It just sounds like spring and probably will more so shortly when the peepers and frogs emerge and we will be privy to the overwhelming sounds of their love calls.

Immobilization can no longer be tolerated when your seeds arrive in the mail and you can now see bare ground.  My garden has diminished in the past few years because there really wasn’t a need to have one – but I am a planner.  I think things will get better here in a month or two – slowly but I’m also concerned for next fall and winter so I will grow and put more by.  I will also have my salads and fresh through out the summer and enough garlic to last me the year (there’s never enough garlic).  My asparagus will come up as it always does and the rhubarb will be ready by the youngest daughter’s birthday for the obligatory birthday pie.  I may have to eat it myself in a virtual birthday party (but is that really bad?).

Get outside for a walk, or sit in the sun and soak up some vitamin D.  Listen to the birds, poke around at the things coming up in your gardens or the woods.  Breathe in the air, look at the blue sky.  It’s the little things that will keep us all going – the little gifts are right there, you just have to stop worrying long enough to notice them.