We played outside for a few hours today and took notice of everything that's growing: the daffodils are blooming, the tulips are up, the daylily leaves are six inches tall. The kids picked some of the violets that grow wild in the yard, admired the single croucus that has bloomed, and had to be discouraged from climbing trees. (Peter's desperate, last ditch line is always: But I have to! I have to!) But the trees are budding, slightly, and the hostas are barely visible nubs in the dirt. The neighbor's peonies are already looking very vigorous, although they'll only actually bloom for a few weeks.

Our seedlings have sprouted! The nasturtiums have these delicate, lacy leaves from the very beginning, the beans are looking sturdy and respectible, and the tomatoes are spindly but plentiful. The cosmos look like they might make a go of it, but the basil hasn't done much at all.

I can't remember which of the shrubs in the backyard is the lilac, but it's what made me fall in love with the house. It's just the one now, but a neighbor told me that thirty years ago there were a dozen of them, making up a border between the two houses, all the way to the street. Down the street a few blocks from my parents' house is an abandoned ice house that hasn't been used for much longer than thirty years, and every spring the lilacs that line the building bloom so beautifully that the scent carries for blocks. We used to gather them when we were kids, and take armfuls of them home to put in vases all around the house. I think the building is still there, and the lilacs; I don't want to ask them in case it was torn down years ago. I like to picture the lilacs blooming there every spring.