east west

I'm getting happier about it.

The trees grew tired of stretching their limbs, endlessly holding up that sodden grey blanket of a sky - I think they had just had it, and finally put their feet down. No more. Now that the trees have won and the clouds have lost, the result has been a string of 80-degree afternoons plus a ten-day forecast that doesn't even mention rain.

I'm taking note of the leaves with something approaching obsession - they're all so tentative and hesitant right now, but they're leaves nonetheless. This is my new way to tell time - once they've grown into drunken chlorophyllic adulthood, once they've shaded our front yard through the worst of the summer heat, once they've decided to turn amber or golden, once they've begun that descent back to the ground where they'll decompose and ultimately nourish our soil - at that point, things will be much different. I'd rather note the passage of time by the trees than by weeks on a calendar anyway.

Other things about April: Katie & Keith have a new puppy and he fell asleep in Peter's hat on Friday night. There's a bunch of daffodils on the butcher-block table. I'm thinking about learning Latin. We sleep with our windows open. Worked that backyard soil and prepared it for beans, peas, tomatoes, spinach, arugula, basil, carrots, cucumbers, and onions. Read a book about India. Dug my chacos out from the back of the closet. Bought popsicles. Took a vacation day and wandered with my dog over the mountain, searching for a trail that wasn't snowed in.

Peter, Andrew, and Keith are selling bicycles again, so I never know who's going to be in the kitchen when I come home. It's getting to the point where I can predict which customers are going to buy and which are not. The dad with his blonde haired daughter? Nope - he wants something newer (read: safer). The two girls with over-sized striped shirts and heavily layered haircuts? Absolutely - these bikes are who they want to be. The a-little-too-eager couple from the suburbs? No - they need something with a little more cushion in the seat. The bald guy in hipster jeans and dark-framed glasses? Definitely - a skinny bike for a skinny boy. It's a case in image/persona profiling, but I think I'm getting pretty good at it from my kitchen-window vantage point.

posted by jessica @ 4:28 PM