Spring has sprung

These are a few snapshots of our spring so far. A few warm days, which we took full advantage of, busting out the kiddie pool, the popsicles, stocking up on three bottles of sunscreen, and now a series of days with rain and cool temperatures that are making me anxious about the health and well-being of my tomato plants. Don't even get me started on the broccoli. A picture of my garden will be forthcoming when I get around to downloading them from the camera, but I want to forewarn you: you will be seized with jealousy. Perfectly wracked with it. Picture it in your mind: raised garden beds, painted Martha Stewart Sea Glass, divided into perfect little squares by hot pink string, and planted with a plethora of baby vegetable plants. The orderliness, the neatness, the sheer symmetry of it all causes my heart to swell every time I glance out the back door. I ignore the strawberries ground into the seams of the hardwood planks of my kitchen floor and float out to the garden beds to pull miniscule weeds from the perfection. Finally, an area of my home I feel in control of. Until the hot weather hits anyway and the tomato vines start growing a mile a minute, the basil needs to be harvested before it all goes to seed, and the swiss chard is taunting me with its nutritive content when all I really want is nachos. Until then, though, I will putter happily and let the laundry pile up on the basement floor.

Frankie has enjoyed the garden so far. She helped with the planting and was thrilled to see some of the seeds were sprouting. "Mom! Mom! The swiss charge is up!". The trick is to see if she will actually eat any of the vegetable bounty. The season has not been off to a good start. There have been a lot of neon frozen popsicles, hot dogs, a bag of blue cotton candy. The last was from her father, who seems constitutionally unable to stop feeding her high fructose corn syrup. I understand now that children don't get spoiled because they themselves are constantly demanding things, it's because they have fathers who swoon every time their daughter smiles over a Thin Mint.

The blue cotton candy was purchased at our local carnival/parade/exotic petting zoo called Fruitport Old Fashioned Days. The Old Fashioned part is the parade, where every old man in the West Michigan area trots out his shiny baby blue Cadillac and drives slowly down the main drag. There is a lot of candy thrown and Frankie was suitably impressed with the fantasticness of that event until she spotted the carnival and begged and begged to go on the Ferris Wheel. It turns out that grandparents are suckers for Frankie's delight, too. My mom and dad bought her a wristband that entitled her to as many rides as she could possibly go on in the company of all the offspring of teenage mothers in the greater Muskegon area. Of course, when Dean got off of work and joined us, he purchased a wristband as quick as a cat could wink her eye and joined her. While I was relegated to putting crabby-baby-to-bed duty at home, they went on ride after ride and eventually tried to cap off the evening at the Asian Buffet, which Dean has convinced Frankie is her favorite restaurant, but is really his. Sadly, their plans were thwarted, not by the stabbing that occurred at the carnival shortly after their exit, but by the fact that Dean's sidekick succumbed to sugar fatigue in her carseat.