This and death

Why, looky there. It's three days until tax returns are due. Better get on that. Yippee skippee, as a certain nephew of mine says.

Each year, the longest tax-related task is finding the W-2 I received back in January.

Radish sandwiches

The other day, I was thinking about cucumber sandwiches, and today, courtesy of P. Allen Smith, I read about radish sandwiches. Those sound good, too. I like radishes in a salad.

Radishes make me burp. I debated whether to share that and decided yes.

Cukes

This evening after work I mowed the lawn. I mowed carefully and thoroughly and did a fine job, if I do say so myself. While I was cutting, the grass smelled like cucumbers to me. It smelled green. I started to think about those cucumber sandwiches you get when you go to a tea place. White bread with no crust, butter, and thin slices of cucumber. On my own, I would never have come up with idea of a cucumber sandwich, but they're tasty on a summer's day.

Two sleeps

Recently I've had a tendency to fall asleep after supper for an hour or two, then wake up for a few hours, then go to bed. In some ways it's unhandy, but I figured if it all adds up to eight hours or so, it's all to the good. I know several people, including members of my family, who have talked about a similar sleep pattern. So I googled, and found plenty of articles about "bimodal sleep." It's a thing.

Springing

I'm so glad that the mornings are starting to get lighter. It's about 7:00 a.m., and I've had the blinds open for a while already. During the winter, I can't do that because it's as dark as night outside. I mean, of course I could open the blinds, but all I'd see would be my reflection in the glass. Now I can see the yard and the bushes down by the creek.

The light helps me wake up in the first place. In the winter, I could sleep till who knows when, but now when I wake up a little, I see some light in the windows, and I know it's morning, not the middle of the night.

I have been buying plants and flowers. I need to start getting them into the ground and into pots.



I have visited three nurseries so far this spring, the Garden Spot Nursery, My Garden Nursery (new--opening where Bakerview Nursery used to be), and Kent's Garden & Nursery. I still plan to go to Vander Giessen Nursery and Van Wingerden Greenhouses. I also have bought and will buy plants from out in front of grocery stores, drug stores, and hardware stores.

Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!



John 20: 1-9

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

Holy Saturday night

Waiting for the morning.

We call this Friday good

T. S. Eliot
"East Coker," from The Four Quartets
Part IV.



The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.