Happy To Be Here

Now, I'm not normally one to romanticize the commonplace, or get poetic about what I consider to be "the ordinary" but tonight, as I sit here in my living room with the windows open, a breeze blowing through the house, I am struck by how happy to be where I am right now. Every year, I forget how much I enjoy springtime in Michigan. Admittedly, the state doesn't exactly get four seasons a year. Usually we get the world's longest winter, and then a few weeks of "spring" before it immediately jumps to 80+ degrees and summer descends on us, miserable and humid, which lasts until mid-October before we get the worlds shortest autumn and the snows start again. But, for those couple weeks of spring, I am content to be exactly where I am. This year is better than last, because we have a new neighborhood that seems to take landscaping pretty seriously. Our neighbors next door have bulbs planted and they all started blooming last week, and nearly everyone on the street has a flowering tree of some type, which are all in full bloom now. We spent the weekend working in the yard, pulling out some of the old, ugly landscaping stones and mowing the lawn, filling in holes and re-seeding some of the patchy areas of the grass. The progress has made me really want to tackle some of our other landscaping projects, though at this point we have to just do bit by bit as we have time to do it. There is a sense of accomplishment in working on something all day and being able to look at the results and think "That looks better". I've never been one for gardening in the past, but it might be something I find myself enjoying as the summer progresses. All I know is that tonight, as the sun was setting, and the smell of our neighbors cherry blossoms was blowing across my yard, I was really happy to be out in my yard, working on something I knew would end up looking better, and that I did it with my own two hands. I like it here.