I had so many fun friends visit me last week. The other week I took down my hummingbird feeder to clean it and because I was out of food for them. I’ve still seen hummingbirds repeatedly visiting my flowers. The bees have been all over my sunflowers and then they stay and pollinate my vegetable flowers!

Just over a week ago a toad made a home in my mulch. He’s not shy and has even come back while I’m working on the garden and reacts calmly when I need him to move to avoid getting hurt. I’ve named him Trevor and now I check on him each day.

Then today I saw a beautiful woodpecker on my neighbor’s tree.  There’s beauty all around me. In vibrant, bold colors. The marigolds I planted from seed are flowering all over the place. My Japanese eggplant has produced 9 beautiful purple fruits! My blueberries just finished their stellar show (lost one over the winter and one was struggling, so it was really all one bush producing this summer). My strawberries are all producing runners which I’m trying to root up in pots to share and relocate into a new bed for next year.

Even before the pandemic I was planning to devote more time to my garden this year. I bought the raised bed frames at the end of last year. I had my seeds organized. I wanted to move the weeds & grass off the side of my house. And I hoped I would finally figure out how to get all the rocks out of the flower bed in the front.

I don’t mind mowing my lawn. I do it in shifts because there is so much, but that doesn’t bother me. It’s the weather that makes mowing my lawn a real chore. On and off rain. Or daily downpours. Or sweat drenching humidity.  So then I decided to extend my other flower beds around the house so there would be less grass to mow. And more room to plant pollinator friendly flowers.

I might finish all that this summer. I might be working into the fall. There’s just so much to do on my own.

Which gets me to on my own. All these hours outside I am the tannest I have ever been. I hate it. It’s just a skin tone darker. Some other person’s pale winter shade. On me it just means I haven’t used enough sunscreen. Hoping nothing worse comes from it. My freckles are thick as thieves across my knees and arms and cheeks too.

My hair is also the reddest it’s been since childhood. Golden blond streaks. Vibrant orange waves. Dark red strands twined in. I wear beach hats and ball caps and whatever I can to shade my face and cover my scalp when gardening.  So it could be brighter. Maybe.

My hair is also the longest it’s ever been. Now I know, I don’t ever want hair this long again. It dips into everything. It looks amazing in a braid but it just feels like too much. Still, we’re in a pandemic and it feels like an experiment. I’m not sure when I’ll cut it. I have so many posts and internal thoughts about perfect hair. Maybe I’m just waiting for the world to be a little less awful, a little more deserving of good hair days and places to go with it.

Labels: find the good, gardening, hummingbirds, I feel it everywhere even in my red hair, perfect hair, Red hair with a curl, sunflowers, toads