Spring Comes at Last to Rainbow's End

Today is the first day of May! Hooray! So as I (almost) always do on the first day of a month, today I start a new life.

It's also a new season, as spring has finally come to Valley Lane in Six-Mile Canyon where I live with my True Love in a funky treehouse-sort-of-house called Rainbow's End. 

It was only this past weekend that the weather was so lovely that David and I could sit on the deck for much of the day. 

The hummingbirds have returned from their winter migration, so I filled the feeders we bought last year with nectar of four parts water to one part sugar, and we hung the new feeder for the pygmy nuthatches and Stellar's jays that we bought from a local bird store with the assistance of a pleasant and knowledgeable young man whose advice proved entirely correct on every point. What joy it is now to see the birds flocking to our bird buffet, as we sit with mimosas and David's fresh-baked sourdough bread spread with delectable fromage d'affinois. Yesterday two deer lingered on the hillside, nibbling the coarse wild grass that is now making the rocky cliff emerald green. Forgotten is the toil of shoveling those 66 steps from the January snows that refused to melt, or trying to drive up the steep, icy hill at Coffin Corner, and talking more and more often about "when we move back to town." We love it here, we love it here, we love it here! We want to live here forever!

So at the heart of May's new life: savor spring in David's arms.

But addicted as I am to productivity, I have two writing goals as well. First: produce a good draft of a book chapter I'm writing on "the library as a liminal space in children's literature" for a scholar friend's edited collection. I've already hauled home dozens of books from the public library, read them all, and taken 43 handwritten pages of notes about them. But now I need to make notes on the notes! And think of something I actually want to SAY! 

Second: start brainstorming ideas for a next children's book of my own. Some of my writer friends have dozens of ideas buzzing about in their feverish brains. I don't. I have little teensy scraps of things that might become ideas someday, but actual ideas come to me ONLY when I sit down with clipboard, pad of paper, and pen, and write at the top of the pages: IDEAS. Then, and only then, do a few pitiful ones start creeping out from their hiding places. I plan to spend all of May just gathering enough pitiful ideas that a few might grow into something that could become a real, live book.

Progress on both goals starting today!

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