Mothers' Day

A lovely spring day spent doing this and that. Two of our three children at home, breakfast in bed, roses, tulips, Lady Gaga CD (my kids are quick to pick up hints!), celebratory meal this evening. 

We don't have a swimming pool, but we do have a small pond. This afternoon we cleaned it out for the first time in quite a while - hard work, but intensely satisfying. Sadly, none of the fish survived the harsh winter (or had the heron eaten them all?) but the frogs were fine, hunkered down in the sludge. We got the cleaning done just in time, there is a frog orgy going on out there as the pond refills. Now we'll be able to see the frogspawn develop and there won't be any fish to eat the tadpoles. Ah, the cycle of life!!

Here's a poem by Seamus Heaney to mark the day.

from Clearances 3
(in memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984)
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.


So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives -
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.
Seamus Heaney


from Being Alive: the sequel to Staying Alive, edited by Neil Astley, Bloodaxe.