Do you ever have days that are amazing despite the fact that they really are hum ho ordinary days?
Yesterday was like that for me. It was Sunday, so we slept in some (Papa even took care of the dogs when they woke early rather than putting T-Guy to the task as Papa can get back to sleep and T-Guy can't). Breakfast was zucchini bread (baked ahead and pulled from the freezer to defrost overnight), plus bacon and sausage. I guess maybe that was our clue that it would be a great day; I mean really, how decadent is it to have bacon and sausage for breakfast at home?
We read the paper a bit and then started cleaning house. We usually clean house on Saturdays, but this weekend we'd spent Saturday morning hard at work preparing the swim club pool and grounds for the season opening, done our errands that afternoon, and had date night.
The guys all went for a bike ride while I did a bit more house cleaning (and laundry all day). Papa and I went looking at open houses while the boys had their video game time. That was enjoyable and while we aren't actually looking for a house it's nice to see what is out there now and again. Honestly, there was one house that I am interested in; the house is okay (if stuck in the late 80s/early 90s) but the yard is amazing, over an acre with lots of fruit trees and room for raised beds. Seriously, there were Valencia orange trees, Navel orange trees, "juice" orange trees (I thought that's what Valencias are), lemon trees, fig trees, a tangelo tree, an Oro Blanco grapefruit tree, a kumquat tree, peach trees, avocado trees, blackberry bushes, and more. Oh, and a full, heated green house!
We came home again, I took out the lamb to sit at room temperature for an hour, made the boys a big bowl of popcorn, and got to work amending the soil in our wading pool beds. Last year we got started with these garden beds but bought an "all-in-one"type compost that ended up being nothing like the mix recommended in Square Foot Gardening. It couldn't hold moisture and hardened up, and we had a heck of a time growing anything. This year will still be an experiment; our local garden center didn't have vermiculite, just perlite, so I added that instead (not wanting to spend the gas to get to the garden center with vermiculite). Now researching online some people who do SFG don't care for perlite, some do. We'll have to see how it works.
We grilled rack of lamb for dinner and ate outside, although it had gotten a little chilly and I needed a light sweater. This was our first real meal outside this year and it was so much more pleasant than last year. Last year we'd created the wading pool beds with compost and brought home tons of flies with the compost, something that hadn't happened in 2007 when we built our first garden beds.
Papa and I set off for our evening walk a little later than usual and it ended up being like the walks we used to take before we had children; we didn't walk a set route and walked for a long time. Then it was home for a bit of TV (The Borgias) and then flipped our mattress, put on clean sheets, and got ready for bed.
Such an ordinary day, and yet such a feeling of satisfaction and happiness. It wasn't a day at the beach or Disneyland and it wasn't free of the typical tasks of daily life such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry, but it was absolutely wonderful. We connected, we worked hard together, we shared meals, and we dreamed out loud together. Really, what could be more wonderful than that?
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