The air smelled like wood stove and my fingers were icy cold, but I was done waiting.
All winter I watched snow pile up outside, storm after storm. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do but hold my baby and try to make her comfortable.
I slept at odd hours of the day and spent endless nights fumbling with diapers and begging my baby to fall asleep. One day blended into the next, and time seemed to stop.
It has been three months, and I'm ready to come back to Earth now. I can feel the sun getting warmer. I hear the birds. I see daffodils pushing up out of the soil.
Cold or not, it's spring and I'm going outside.
I left the baby with my husband, put on my winter coat and stepped out of the dark garage into the blinding afternoon sun.
There was plenty to do. The snow had nearly melted, which meant I was able to reach the compost pile again. I brought out load after load of vegetable scraps, which had been accumulating for a few weeks in the icy garage. I emptied a whole bin of litter from my pet rabbits onto the pile, too.
Then I broke down some cardboard boxes and dragged them out to my vegetable garden, where I am cutting into the lawn to expand the footprint. March may be too early to start tending my lawn, but it's a perfectly good time to kill it.
I scavenged big rocks to hold the cardboard down and enjoyed the weight in my hands. Last fall when I was pregnant, I had to be cautious about heavy objects. No longer!
By now my fingertips were going numb, but I couldn't resist one more chore. I grabbed the moldy trunk of a dead broccoli plant from last year and pulled it out of the raised bed. It had a strong root system that still clung to the ground. I shook off the dirt and, though I couldn't smell it yet, the garden soil looked rich and crumbly and ready for a new crop.
Fortunately, I have that next crop ready to go. My seed order came in and it includes a few things I can plant outside as soon as the soil is workable: leaf lettuce and shell peas.
Next time the baby goes down for a nap, that's exactly what I'm going to do. It may not smell like spring, but as far as I'm concerned the growing season has begun.
Longtime Eagle-Tribune Health and Science reporter Julie Kirkwood has decided to be a stay-at-home, full-time mom to Molly. Julie's column and blog, however, will continue in the At Home section of Sunday North. She will also contribute occasional stories to our newspaper.
