Cleaning off the porch

[pegkerr]

This weekend I performed one of the rituals which means that spring is finally officially here. I have been delaying because ordinarily it is a reward I give myself after taxes are done (they are still not done; Rob is trying to get around a bug in Turbotax) but I finally went ahead anyway: I have cleaned off the porch furniture and bullied the girls into sweeping it off and have put out plants. Now starts the season of sitting on the porch. I will eat my breakfast and read the paper there during the summer months. I planted more hanging baskets than usual (three filled with lobelia) and bought six aluminum narrow ledge planters and filled them with pansies, so the porch has a lot more plants than in previous years. It is my favorite place during spring and summer, partly I think because there is nothing there to goad me into guilt. There is nothing I look around that I see I need to do. The porch is only for enjoyment: for greeting people going by on the sidewalk, enjoying the breeze, watching rain drip from the eaves, watching the heat lightning and listening to the thunder at night. I am really the person who uses it the most--Rob just doesn't think to sit on the porch to relax. The girls will play there, sometimes (store or school or whatever until I nag them into putting the furniture back into place) but they don't sit and read there much. Deep down, I am selfishly a little glad. As far as loafing there by the hour, doing nothing but reading, glass of iced tea at the elbow, the porch is mine.