The End of April

 

We had a wedding to go to this past weekend and it was located several hours south of us, making the trip a sort of spring-opener for us.  Leaving the gnarled fingers of our own bare-branched trees and slowly reviving grasses behind and winding up where flowering trees were all gussied up and glorious was pretty amazing.  The drive home, pinks and greens turning back to brown and crusty was less so.   The wheat was already knee high in places and there was a mustard field just outside of the church where a family kindly took our picture.  Oh, the bright yellow of that field can't help but make a girl cheerful.

I do have a few little things here and there popping up, now that I took some time to clear the flower circle out of winter debri and dead leaves.  I even spied the true heralder of spring- asparagus!  Unfortunately, every one of my garden beds is entirely covered in dandelions and grasses so I have some serious work cut out for me to prepare beds.  This is what happens when you are lazy in the fall, great with child be darned.  The dandelions are not dandy to me this year, but depressing.  There are more in the garden than in the whole yard!  And the strawberry patch I believe is going to have to be entirely redone.  There is so much to do outside to prepare for the growing season.  It is slightly overwhelming.   But it will all work out in the end.  (I repeat in my head, over and over...)

Speaking of trees, ever since the last one, these cutting boards have been my go-to couple gift.  I gave one as a wedding gift this weekend and one as a Christmas gift to Matt's brother at Christmas.  The latter one being extra special because Matt actually made the cuttingboard instead of me just drawing on a storebought one.  Isn't it beautiful?  I like the concept a lot but I do admit that my trees need some serious work.  I need to study the composition of trees more thoroughly to make my tree sketches less wonky, the branches less stubby and the trunk more natural.  Perhaps allotting myself more than a hasty 15 minutes to sketch and burn the design into the wood before having to wrap it up would help with that too. But will that actually happen?  Doubt it.

April is about over and May is fast approaching.  May is one of my favorite months of the year.  Maybe because it is my birthday month or maybe because it is when the lilacs begin to pop or maybe it is just because I come out of hibernation, stretching and yawning into the bright warm sun.  Whatever the reason, I am eager for May to make way.