April 25, 2008 Time for spring planting

Planting corn

Today was a beautiful day- an absolutely gorgeous day, that made me happy to be in Michigan. It must have been almost 80F today, and for a while we had a beautiful bright sun too, which is saying a lot for the end of April here. :) We went to one of my favorite places ever, Barritt's Nursery in Adrian. It's where we always go to buy plants for the garden every year (we've been doing this for like 15 years now) and I could spend hours and hours wandering among the flowers, looking at the new varieties, and just enjoying the nursery. It was great. After we got all the plants in the afternoon we had to mix in compost into the planting beds, and also into the big garden plot, where the corn goes. Which of course involves spreading the compost over a very large area- we got a good workout. It's just to great to work outside in the warm weather and know that what you're doing now will cause your crops to grow better and have better fruit. It was a very good day. :)

G spreading compost in the garden

Tomorrow is the wedding, in the evening, and we have some other errands to run in the morning. I hope it's as beautiful a day tomorrow as it has been today. I almost felt like I was in some sort of fairy tale, like I don't really live in England, that was all a dream. It seems so normal to be planting the garden, and I think I was ready for a little stress free normalcy in America.

Today we also did some random errands, and I thought I'd share some of my favorite things about being in Michigan this trip (in no particular order):

-Hamburger dill pickles. We don't have them in the UK.
-Homemade salsa and real tortilla chips
-Everyone is so nice and friendly to you
-The magnolias are blooming
-bubble tea!
-Eating at our favorite ethnic restaurants
-seeing friends and family

Yesterday we went walking around on central campus a bit, after we got bubble tea, and we were planning to walk through the Diag, but that didn't happen because we somehow forgot that graduation is tomorrow, and the Diag was a sea of chairs- literally, a sea. It was surreal. We had a good time anyway though, and we visited my favorite magnolia tree on campus (yes, I have favorite trees of many species on campus, and I know the trees on campus intimately), the one that lives outside of the Dana building. If you've never seen it flowering you really should- it's magnificent. I don't care that I look like an idiot for enjoying the trees, touching the flowers, smelling them, smiling and laughing happily at the beautiful tree and generally spending some quality time enjoying one of Gd's fine creations. I know that I must look strange but that's ok- I don't care. :) There was a janitor there taking a break outside and we was like "You wanna see something really interesting- all of the stuff in Dana is recycled, even the floors!" He was being so nice about it since he thought we were not locals (the way I was fawning over the magnolia probably made him think I'd never seen one in my entire life) and so at his kind suggestion we went in and wandered in Dana a bit. I had several classes there, so I knew all about it, but he was just so nice about it that we went in anyway. :) But I nearly laughed out loud that he was comparing my favorite magnolia to recycled tire floors and finding the floors more interesting. Ah, the life of a tree enthusiast. :)