sunday

It's another blue sky day, 67 (F) degrees outside. I can hear a neighborhood kid hitting the pavement with jumps on a skateboard a half a block away. Earlier, there was a small sound from the Speedway, drivers testing or preparing for the Indy 500 at the end of the month.

Outside, all is green, that full, fresh green of the beginning of the season. A gentle cool breeze blows through the open window.

I bought three tobacco plants and a flat of rocket snapdragons from a women's group at church this morning. Time is running out for this gentle spring, and I must decide if I am going to go ahead and thin/divide/transplant some of my later blooming perennials or wait till fall or next spring. Weather like this usually perks my energy levels up, but today, I am lazy, content at sitting by the window.

Succession is the descriptive term for the biological need for action to occur on a spot of open dirt -- grasses, trees, forests. It suggests movement and change, and like all other things in life, reminds us that there is hardly any sedentary, frozen-in-time, unchanging life on any one spot. Like folk who live in a house or apartment for many years, the current vegetation in my garden is biding its time, but even the tall trees throughout the neighborhood have no guarantees of forever. The landscape continues to change, good or bad.

Meanwhile, in my spring attempts to arbitrarily hold back invading plants, I continue to weed out as many new tree seedlings as I do other noxious vegetation that wants to dominate my garden beds (which gets me thinking about re-forestation, and succession (often in nature the filling up of a spot of land takes different routes - no pun intended - with waves of one kind of plant life replaced by something else).

In the distance is the low whine of a gas engine lawnmower, a dog barking, a plane up in the sky making its way, I assume, to the airport. Birds are singing. It is a quiet, beautiful day.