On this beautiful first full day of spring...
...more opportunities to hang laundry
(I think there were only 3 days over the winter
when my need to do laundry coincided with
dry and sunny weather)
Oscar is my helper.
Scilla emerges.
Scilla are the first sign of spring in my parents' yard.
I remember loving them as a kid,
and that enthusiasm hasn't left me.
But I miss my old garden with multiple harbingers of spring -
Why didn't I think last fall to plant spring bulbs here?
The anise magnolia is still keeping its secrets to itself.
No sign yet of a bud ready to open
but there are promises of hundreds of blooms to come.
D'oh! The first dandelion.
And invasive garlic mustard.
Note to self: remove that label from the banana peel!
The snow has finally melted,
so I can now set up a compost pile.
I learned recently that egg cartons, cereal boxes,
and other paper products near the end of their useful recycling life
can be added to the compost pile as a "brown" source
if there are no autumn leaves available.
During most of the twenty-seven years at my old house,
we had a compost pile.
I didn't realize how much it would gnaw away at me
to not have one once I moved in with my parents.
One slightly comforting thing in the meantime
has been getting food scrap collection
put in place at our Chicago office as of January.
It's requiring more education and continual feedback
with my work colleagues than I expected,
but it's worth doing to keep food waste out of landfill,
which keeps our air cleaner by avoiding the production
of methane gas that results when food is buried in landfills.
