I figured maybe I’d post a few poems throughout April, seeing as how it’s National Poetry Month. Here’s one by an old New England favorite:

A Prayer in Spring
   ~Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

I stopped by the garden yesterday after picking up some seedlings at the farmers market. Yes, I know I planted seeds just last week, but these will help tide us over until the seeds pop up.

It’s arugula at the top of the shot, mizuna (a mild mustard green on the left), and lettuce (a romaine, I think) on the right. At the bottom of the shot is my sorrel, which reseeds itself every year. (The grassy things on either side are clumping onions, which I think we planted the first year we had the garden and which we just let grow wild.

My croci petered out, but the daffs continue to look nice. I anticipate, though, that this will be the last week for them. My tulip, however, will either bloom this week or next. Right now, it is sporting some very fancy green bugs that match its leaf hue exactly.

The peas did not yet have to be strung up, since their tendrils only stretched to the top of my hand. I think Rudi and I will tackle that this coming weekend, though, because they’re only a few warm days away from needing it, and those tendrils are a pain to unwind once they’ve decided to latch onto the wrong thing.

Finally, my beloved violets have emerged! I’d seen them out elsewhere in the neighborhood during the week, so I was hopeful mine had finally decided to unfurl as well. I did not collect a bouquet, since I was heading out, rather than home, from the garden, but I’ll be stopping back tomorrow or Wednesday for a nosegay (and some more in-focus photos).

I stopped by the tail end of the Friends of the Arlington Library book sale today and came away with six things: three Christmas items (two detective stories, including one whose author was, until recently, a mystery of its own, and a dvd of Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas), a favorite childhood title, The Saturdays; a book by a favorite author (Fannie Flagg) that I hadn’t yet read; and a children’s book called A Book Dragon, which I bought solely for the title.

The total bill for the bunch came to $2.25. Not a bad haul, eh?

Do you like to partake of library book sales, and, if so, do you have any favorite finds?

Today was a day for rest and relaxation.

I slept in and finished my book.

I soaked in the sun and did some knitting.

We went out for pizza and ate homemade cookies for dessert.

It was a good day.

April has arrived, as has its first weekend. It’s supposed to be comfortable and dry, if not actually sunny. Here’s what I’m hoping it includes:

• Try my hand at macarons. I made them once several years ago and they were not my biggest success. Over Christmas and my birthday, Mum got me set up with a pan, fun food coloring, and a cookbook, which I’ve now perused. Keep your fingers crossed they turn out less … flat … than last time!
• Check on my garden. Maybe I’ll have to put in supports for the peas!!!
• See Shazam!
• Head to Virginia for a library book sale.
• Put together a bag for Goodwill. Volleyball shirts keep falling on my head every time I open my closet door, which means it’s time to send some of them away.
• Visit a friend. His home remodeling is complete and he’s invited folks to stop by to check it out.
• Finish my book.
• Listen to some baseball.
• Reorganize our hallway closet. We need to empty out the car and reshuffle our seasonal items (no more need to have my ice skates accessible, but the portable hammock might be a plus!), both of which means taking a look at what is actually taking up space in our non-clothes closet. I’m hoping there’s an untapped air pocket in there. (That is actually possible, since I used to have a gigantic clothing bag in there that’s no longer being used.)
• Enjoy the cherry blossoms and maybe the fireworks celebrating them.
• Send out some birthday cards. (This also means figuring out where my stamps are hiding, since I don’t want to have to keep using my Snowy Day stamps now that it’s spring!)
• Eat pizza.

How about you? What are you hoping to do this weekend?

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. There is a mini golf course at Hains Point — the oldest continually operating miniature golf course in the U.S., dating back to 1931 — that Rudi and I had never tried before. As we biked around looking at the cherry blossoms, we noticed it was not especially crowded, so we paused in our perusal to putt a round. We played 21 holes, because there was a family with small children ahead of us that we caught up to on the final hole, so we told them to take their time, since no one was behind us. The other benefit of there being no one behind us was that it allowed me to play my favorite version of mini golf, which often involves my ball gaining some altitude and speed and which is decidedly less safe and fun to play when others are around. Rudi was impressed when I sent a ball careening off the course and then, instead of taking the penalty shot and dropping it back onto the green, I chipped it back on. (I had to eventually take the penalty shot for the one that ripped into the (deserted) picnic area, because the curb to get back onto the hole was higher there.)

2. A friend emailed with very exciting news.

3. We got to our first baseball game of the season on Saturday, a gorgeous bluebird of a day, with a slight breeze off the river and temperatures in the 70s. The Mets got on the board early with three runs in the top of the first inning and kept adding to their total, but the Nationals regularly nibbled away at their lead, keeping the game interesting to us until the final out in the bottom of the ninth guaranteed the Mets their surprisingly fraught victory.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?