Spring has Sprung . . .

Despite today's 50 degree, gray and windy day, and another string of rain over the last week that, combined with my Mahler's 2nd Symphony performance schedule this past weekend, got my grass growing easily mid-calf high. I was out tonight cutting grass until the point of almost-dark where you can hardly see the cut line for the return pass, after teaching and meeting my friend with the Sam's Club membership to buy 452 ice cream bars for after the spring concert. Glass half full...no worries about the ice cream melting on the way back to the school freezer! 

😃

 Mailbox garden last week.

 Maybe this is a crab apple tree?  Not sure, but I love, love, love it's spring flowers and the shape of the tree. I planted it as a wee, little thing around 17 years ago and came back to see it full size. I love it's shape, it's a great tree!

My front yard, width-wise.

I can not express enough, even still, how grateful, thrilled, in awe and so much more that I get to be in this house and tending to this property. For the past just over three years now, I walk the dog just about every day around the perimeter of the yard, then around the apple trees, daylily garden, shed veggie garden, hosta tree (tree with hostas around the base) and take in where everything is at that point in the season...over three years straight, every day...and I'm not tired of it one little bit. I always, literally always, have something I want to check out. Isn't that amazing...with everything...the joy that can still be found?

Our God is SO Great!

Well, look who arrived home yesterday . . .

Naturally we're all so happy to have Lara arrive home from school, but Livia just can not contain her excitement and has plans for the two of them before she's even stepped foot in the door. 💖

The shopping at the mall hasn't happened yet but oh what a glorious walk in the Arb this afternoon, the three girls had!

 I keep forgetting that I need a magnolia tree in my life. 

I just LOVE those flowers!

 They volleyballed throughout the entire walk.

 Naturally I can't see into the future, but it would not surprise any of us if Livia ends up 5'10" tall and playing volleyball in college somewhere while getting a music major. (-:

She is almost to both my and Lara's shoulders and both Lara and I fit into her little healed boots last night reuniting in the kitchen around some cold shrimp, green beens and anything else that turned up...oh yeah, like mango sorbet. Yum!

And, finally, the mailbox garden of tulips began to bloom this weekend. We are late, late, late this year due to the extended cold and then dark and rainy days. Thank goodness for the sunshine and warmth today (73 on the car temp)!

"And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life" . . . but, he would have been 18 . . .

Yes, Praise God, this is Ben's truth. Yes, the comfort and peace that passes beyond all understanding comes throughout many, many of my days from this truth. Yes, we will meet again in heaven one day. Our God is so great!

But, 

And I'm sorry to have a "but" when our Heavenly Father takes such amazing care of us,

But,

When you're a mom and it's your son's 18th birthday and the family has to have the sea salt and caramel cupcakes without him, when you have to say "it would have been his 18th birthday," when your son won't graduate this year . . . sometimes it can just still hit you like it just happened yesterday.

August 8, 2010

Age nine, that's how old Livia is right now.

Ben always loved just hanging out in the Lake Superior waters, no problem, not too cold for him. He and I would snorkel looking for favorite rocks. See all the rocks in front of him...

We'd bring bags full of our favorites home every year. I've got them in various gardens, along the edge of the garage, I brought them all with me from the old house. 💜

 Ben would always help carry the biggest, heaviest ones to the van for me on our last day, putting them on the floor as someone's foot rest for the 11 hour ride home.

 Each year for so many years I'd bring one or two really big ones back and now have just the most perfect stone walkway in my front garden, sprinkled with our little "favorites" along the way.

 Today, the Rose of Sharon that Ben and I planted at the old house when he was five. I dug it up and transplanted it behind the shed here before I was even certain I could buy our older house back (older house again we originally owned it from 1999-2003 that I got to buy back again when SP left the family in 2015).  The Rose of Sharon now stands about shoulder high, it shoots out new growth every year and beautiful flowers. Even before Ben died, I had planted it behind my bedroom wall outside, it sits behind the headboard of my bed. 💜

Today, the clematis I bought as a center piece for Ben's confirmation brunch. It continues to grow so strong at the corner of the shed where I first placed it. Moving it this spring to the corner of the house near the Rose of Sharon after I move a grapevine and hardy kiwi plant I started there a few years ago. In that area I also have the most soothing, deep sounding chime our former neighbors gave me to remember Ben. I'm looking forward to growing that corner garden of his memories.

July 24, 2016

Age 15.

Our last summer at Lake Superior with our strong, fun-loving Ben.

He always, and I mean always, had the biggest, most natural smile!

💜

And he is sorely missed.

Link to Ben's past birthdays