Sunday, June 15, 2008

Shacked Up Domestic Bliss

Last week a friend asked me what my days were like. "So what are you doing tomorrow? Tell me everything. What do your days look like now?" he asked me. And as I rattled off the details of my day, from the getting up around 7Am to fiddling with my little red french press at work, to stumbling on home, I realized just how different my life is from anything it has ever been. How strange. So what does my life look like now that I've settled in Montana?

This morning I'm sitting in the relative quiet of the house, sipping coffee with the windows and doors open. It SNOWED last week, so the mild and warm 54 degrees is a welcomed and pleasant change. After all, it is June so you would think we would be lapping up the heat by now, but not in Montana and not this spring. My roommates and Jason are all still sleeping upstairs so it's quiet except for the click of the clock and the birds outside. Jason put up a bird feeder yesterday while I was at work at the shoe store, so now little multi-colored birds are singing his praises from the edge of the yard. For my birthday, a friend of mine had given me a hanging plant for the porch, but a family of birds took up residence and laid five eggs (originally there were five blue eggs, but somehow that switched to two blue and one larger white one with brown spots. hmmmm.....), which then hatched into three baby birds. Jason now says that his bird feeder is feeding the parents, and he checks on the nest every day. The plant, of course, has since gone toes-up, but the baby birds are doing well.

Our veggie garden is sprouting up, almost so fast that I can see it grow. We planted it a couple weeks back with everything from beans to lettuce to watermelon along with the standard assortment of tomatoes, spinach and the requisite zucchini and squash. It's 13 x 50 feet so before I know it I'll be sorting, cleaning and storing vegetables at a pace I may or may not be able to keep up with. Last night we had our friends Max and Ariel over for dinner. Max (short of Massimiliano--he immigrated to the US from Italy when he met Ariel) stood there admiring the garden with me and remarked that when the basil and tomatoes comes it we'll have to call him over so that he can show us how to make 'some real Italian food'. Max and Ariel just found out this week that she's pregnant with a boy, so this fall there will be a little guy arriving that we'll all get to meet this fall.

Jason has woken up since I started writing this post. He's going through his bird book trying to figure out who is making the sing-song "heee-heee" noise in our yard. Apparently it's a Starling and it has friends. The bird family on our porch is of the House Finch variety, and earlier this morning he saw a Red-Wing Blackbird. Apparently we'll be going back to the Home Depot today (they're beginning to know us there) to buy a birdbath. In addition to that project, we'll be painting, spackleing, doing laundry, cooking out, cleaning, weeding, hiking, baking and vacuuming just to name a few things.

So today, that is my day. Simple, calm and lovely. Life is good.

Cheers,
NC

Song of the day: You Have Stolen My Heart by Dashboard Confessional