Spring and gardening is coming!

One of the surest signs of spring is when the clock "springs" forward an hour, thereby depriving us of an hour of sleep, but giving us hope that eventually there will be more daylight and warm weather. Minnesotans take any bit of hope we can grasp with our cold, frozen little fingers.

We are looking forward to 50-degree weather this week... YAHOO!!! There may be some who will venture out in their t-shirts and shorts, blinding us all with their lily-white skin, but I plan to take it easy. Maybe I'll wear a lighter coat and leave off the scarf and gloves. Who knows, we're living large here in the northland!

Plus, the annual winter hibernation has brought its normal result (unlike the wild animals, who LOSE weight with hibernation, I put it on like an extra layer of protection against the cold), which means I'm going to need to do some serious gardening this spring and summer.

Gardening is exercise I can handle. Exercise I can't handle includes going outside in cold or hot weather, sweating in any capacity, and breathing too much dry indoor air. So there's not much left that I CAN handle. Sheesh, no wonder I've been gaining a more serious layer of protection every year!

Add to that the sneaking suspicion that I'm going through perimenopause, and my winter has been something else. I don't understand why they don't just call it menopause, unless it's to make us forty-somethings feel better about it. "Oh, I'm not going through menopause yet. It's PERImenopause, you see. Totally different because I'm way too young to be going through MENOPAUSE."

But back to my meandering musings. I am so looking forward to gardening this year because we will finally be moving into our own home, after three years living with our loving and longsuffering relatives. We are so grateful for family who loves us enough to let us live with them!

And I have to say, it's been a truly wonderful experience, living with another family for long periods of time (years!). It would seem to be an unusual thing for it to be a truly wonderful experience, but it really has, honest!

Sometimes, when my lovely sis-in-law and I would meet in one of our living rooms (they have a downstairs apartment that they let us stay in) in our robes, chatting over our morning coffee, we would wonder why more families didn't do this -- share a roof but have separate living spaces.

We did find out that as our kids got older, the space became too small for our growing families, but the kids LOVED having their cousins right upstairs/downstairs. It's much more understandable to me how families "back when" could stand living in tighter quarters than we do now. I'm sure that with the housing market the way it is, more families are discovering the wonders of living together.

I'm so thankful that it's been a wonderful experience. And now, living with Brian's dad, in his too-big house since my dear mom-in-law passed on almost two years ago, has also been a wonderful experience. I'm not kidding; no rosy mist interfering with my memories because we're still living with dear dad-in-law and will be for at least a couple more months while we fix up our house.

Honestly, I think it's unusual because we have the greatest family in the world, on both sides. We are all normal people with normal problems and some dysfunctions (just like everyone else in the world), but family is always priority. There's nothing we wouldn't do for each other. What a blessing!

The boys saw our house for the first time tonight, and they are so excited to have their own rooms. It's a small house, but just right for us. We close on it tomorrow morning, and I must be a little anxious about it because I had a nightmare last night that we were not able to get the house because someone else had bought it. Yikes.

So gardening in my own dirt, putzing around in my own house, and loving EVERY situation God puts me in... that's what I'm really looking forward to this spring. Now if only my teenagers would calm down....