Yep, that should be about it (for all of you newbies who might be wondering).  We've had the snow and the hail on the dogwood, so the last of Winter is likely behind us now.  We should be good to go until December or so on warm temperatures and beautiful days.

Eric has the feevah and is getting into his yardman mode, tilling and plotting and planning.  He also hauled out his prospecting equipment this week and is making plans to get busy on the mining claims.  This is the first year he has been in a position to dedicate enough time and energy to doing it justice, so he's very excited. 

Spring work for me involves tackling the Dread Shed where everything I own that I don't need in the next 20 minutes or so is stored.  During the Winter, stuff just gets kind of thrown out there where ever it lands and in the Spring, I haul everything out of the shed, go through the 47 thousand boxes that are out there being a little more ruthless each year in weeding out things we don't need and haven't used.  This year, Eric is building a new storage shed, so we will be carefully transferring and storing.  Since the GF Clean Up day is canceled, I'll need to rent a giant dumpster from Amador to get rid of my crap.  It's worth every dime (and costs a lot of dimes). 

I learned along time ago that garage sales make me crazy.  Going to them thrills me to pieces, but having them drives me nuts, so if I'm getting rid of anything, I usually just put it at the end of my driveway with a "free" sign on it.  Susan at the post office suggests not to do that, but instead, put it down there with a sign that says "$20" on it and wait for someone to steal it.  It'll go a lot faster that way.

One of the things I love most about Spring is being able to sleep with the balcony door open a bit.  When we first moved here from Sacramento, Eric kept locking the door to the balcony and I finally asked him, "Who do you think is going to break in here during the night?  Batman?"  Our house is an A-Frame with an annex:

 
(Some of this is now a nice, dark, foresty green which Eric started
using to paint the trim before he realized there was no way in hell he
could reach to paint the tallest of the trim, grrrr.  Anyone got a
cherry picker I can borrow for an afternoon?)

Because of the way it is arranged, we have no bedroom windows.  The boys' room, which is opposite ours upstairs, has windows across the back, but we have a balcony door and that's it.  I like to sleep with a window open, so the door is as close as I can get to that.  So yeah, if you want to hoist a ladder to the balcony in the middle of the night (unless, of course, you actually are Batman) to get into my house and rob me of a bunch of crap you don't really want in the first place, come on in.  Just don't wake me up to do it and don't get in the way of Eric going for his gun.  That part could get ugly.

I do truly love my little house, but I would love it even more if I could build another annex onto the East side of it and have a bigger kitchen and bigger living room, plus an extra bedroom if we could swing it.  Unfortunately, El Dorado County is absolutely ridiculous about permit fees, not to mention the actual cost of building, so who knows when that will happen.  Plus, our septic tank is to the East of the house and we'd have to find out where that sucker lives before commencing on putting a house on top of it.

For me, Spring is primarily about setting goals for the year.  Eric and I have a tradition that on the first day of Spring every year, we plant beans into tiny pots of potting soil to represent what we want to manifest in our lives in the coming year.  It really helps us to evaluate where we are in the course of our lives and to actively thing about the things we'd like to change.  Most of that consideration comes over the Winter months, which we think of as the "dark of the year."  Those were times when our agricultural ancestors were not out working in the fields, but were instead, out of necessity, pulled inward to the hearth to share stories and go into a more introspective period.  The farmers evaluated the most recent harvest and decide whether to rotate out the crops and if so, what to plant when the earth warmed again. 

We tend to follow that same path, doing what Eric calls, "Spiritual farming."  Instead of growing plants in the field to sustain and nurture us, we grow situations in our life to do the same.  So all through the winter, we think about where we are in life and what we want to be different the next winter.  It lets us focus our energies into a productive goal for the year rather than just ambling through haphazardly without direction.  It gives focus to our actions during the "light" of the year as we work to bring those goals into reality.

Last Spring, I planted "abundant friendship."  For years, I have been a fairly reclusive person.  Most of my relationships at that time happened through email where I could respond at my leisure and give a good deal of consideration to what I would say.  It was an effective way to keep me safe from being hurt most of the time and freed me from dealing with the day to day maintenance of friendships.  There were good reasons why I put up the walls, but it was time to take them down.  That summer, GFORCE was born and as a result, I now have a huge family of wonderful friends, not just from the GFORCE board, who are my very, very bestest friends, but also from the people I've met through GFORCE functions.  In Grizzly Flats, if you take one step out into the community, they'll open their arms and welcome you right in.

It wasn't easy learning how to be a friend again and I am so grateful for the patience and nurturing the GFORCE board members showed me in taking me through the process and now, a year later, I'm still re-learning the ropes and it wasn't an easy transition, but it was so worth the effort and I am blessed more than I could ever imagine with the people I have in my life.  I just love them to pieces.

By the time the first day of Spring hits, Eric and I have figured out what our goals will be and we're ready to plant the beans.  We plant one bean for each goal.  It's a tangible representation of our own dedication to the goal itself.  Just as the bean will need to be watered, fed and exposed to sunlight in the coming weeks, so will our goals need to be tended to and nurtured through the months until harvest in the fall.  We've actually found that the way the bean grows (or doesn't) tends to be indicative of the state of the goals.  For instance, one year, when Nathan was a toddler, he got to my beans and pulled them all up from the roots and ripped those suckers to pieces.  At first, I was devastated, then I realized that it was telling me that what I needed to do was to replant and start working on my goal from a whole new angle.  I was on the wrong track and needed to step back, re-evaluate and begin again.  I did and it worked!

Sometimes, the beans grow huge and bushy and expansive.  Other times, they are small and conservative and slight. 

This year, I planted three beans.  One was for financial stability and prosperity, one was for a year of health and joy for my friend Jennifer who just had the worst year ever last year and one was for my continued strength-building and healthy weight loss.  As I put Jennifer's bean into the dirt, I had the feeling come to me that it had already been handled.  She was going to be just fine.  I put it in there anyway just to be sure.  The next bean was also fairly redundant because Eric ended up planting the same thing (we don't confer on our goals, which tends to keep them more organic).  The healthy weight loss bean was a take.

Sure enough, after a week or so, I had only one little bean sprouting.  The other two never came up.  Eric planted two and only one of his came up.  This was the first year we pulled Delena in on the bean planting.  We've found kids tend to have trouble focusing on goals that are months away.  It's just too long of a time for them.  Delena chose 5 beans and declined to say aloud what they were for.  I got really excited that my bean was up and then Delena brought hers out to show us and they were already practically bushes.  In just a week or so!  All of hers came up and now they are growing all through her bathroom.  It's only been a month now and hers are still about 10 times the size of ours. 

I was wondering, despite the feelings I had at planting, which of the three beans had actually sprouted.  Then I noticed that Eric's bean plant is low, bushy and spreading out.  My bean (the same type of bean placed in the same window and given the same care) is tall and slender and reaching to the sky.  Yep, it's the weight loss bean.

I just did the transplant out from the tiny cup into a pretty pot for it to continue to grow.  As I did, I saw that there was no sign of the other 2 beans in the soil. They just absorbed themselves away.  Delena's bean crop is still working on becoming the Audrey 2 of bean plants.  We're soon going to be able to climb up it and visit the giant.

Can you imagine if he has candy bars?

Those would be gigantic candy bars.

Mmmm.  Candy...

Be particular,