I have been babysitting my daughter's Christmas cactus while she's away at college. Here it is in its spot by the kitchen sink, where I won't forget to water it, putting out new growth because in fact I have not forgotten to water it.
The kitchen-garden seeds are sprouting away in their little plastic greenhouse on the study mantel. Just about all of them are up now: cherry and grape tomatoes, sage and basil, and serrano peppers, the last of the lot to germinate. If I can just keep them alive for another six to eight weeks, the summer garden will be a go.
It's a chillier, rawer day today, with a high of only 53. Of course, as my friend and colleague in South Dakota, with whom I'm essaying this poetry editorship at the New York Sun, remarked to me during a Zoom meeting the other day, where he lives the highs are occasionally breaking into the positive numbers. I can't really complain about a high of 53; on the other hand, it's a wooly kind of day.
The real spring days that happen in February are a joy, though. They are what I love about February. Yesterday the temperatures reached 71, and when my husband came home, we went round to the neighborhood brew pub to sit in the outdoor beer garden. To go out, I changed into the same outfit I'd worn for most of the day on Thursday ––
–– with my gray puffer jacket for when the sun went down. I really like that ensemble, and it made for a good casual brew-pub date-night look, I thought. I like my kicky little Oswegos and would love to have them in more colors. But –– this is what I have, which seems like another good theme for this year. Not this is what I have in the resigned, disappointed sense of this is ALL I have, though one could certainly feel that way sometimes (and who doesn't?). But I can choose to say it with gratitude. This is what I have, and I work with it, and it's good.
But as I say, today is a woolier day. What I'm wearing at the moment:
This mostly-lambswool (the tag's gone, but I'm guessing) thrifted pullover is one of my standout purchases of 2021. I have certainly gotten my $4 worth out of it, having worn it eight times as of today –– only eight? Feels like more than that –– since the start of 2022. It's also a jeans day; I can't be bothered with anything else. I thought these blushy pink bamboo socks would make a good soft contrast, with my Birk Floridas, at least while I'm indoors. I'll probably put on my Madeiras or some other more closed shoe when I go outside.
This is the third day in a row when we have some kind of evening plan, which will necessitate, or at least prompt, a change of clothes. We're going to a friend's birthday party –– and I'm anticipating with an insane amount of pleasure the prospect of being at a party with people I like –– and I think I'll probably put on what I wore to the play night before last.
I felt really good in that outfit, polished and put together and a little special without being overdressed. It's the kind of outfit that bears remembering and repeating, which is why I keep this diary, really.
Now to do . . . some stuff. I need to think ahead about this coming week, because it's the start of Lent, and I have a road trip at the end of it. Meal planning needs a little extra attention, since I have meat that needs either using up before Wednesday or freezing. I'd gotten a ham in my last grocery order, thinking I'd make it for us to eat for days, but then got caught up in a meeting the day I'd planned to cook it, and then we were going out, and then it was Friday, and tonight we're going out again . . . so I have this ham, and I really should probably just bung it into the deep-freeze and forget about it until after Easter. We don't give up meat entirely for Lent, but as we do meatless Fridays year-round, I try to cut way back on it during the week, maybe making Wednesdays regularly meatless as well . . . and also other days. I think last year I quietly took red meat off the menu altogether except for Sundays, and we just ate less meat of any kind overall. Normally we're fairly carnivorous, so this feels good and austere.
Otherwise, I'll peck at some writing and look over my poem entries for the Sun, which I'm supposed to be loading onto the site for week after next, but we're locked out at the moment for some reason, so I haven't been able to do that. I've queued up a nice slate, I think, of public-domain poems, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sara Teasdale (a war poem, which seems appropriate at the moment), Edmund Waller, John Donne, and John Keats. It's been fairly easy to get into the rhythm of writing a little encyclopedia entry to introduce each one, though I'm not as fast at it as my esteemed colleague, who is a walking Wiki source for just about anything. I on the other hand have to do research. I can't just call stuff up out of my subconscious at a moment's notice.
I might actually spend some time today putting together another week's worth of such poems, because I know I'll need to have planned at least that for the month ahead. It starts to be fun once I'm into it.