addiction to the bog in full swing, i come home from a busy day, five classes and a meeting, dinner with all four boys, and play a bog or two while the little guys do d-s or i-carly and unload a little. i get tenth in one game which is unusual for me; i'm usually lucky to get about half in a field of about sixty or seventy of a busy evening, playing against the usual suspects: oniondip, team axolotl, etc. these guys are way addicted. i'm just a small-time chump. but there are things i could be doing instead; some are even worthwhile.

planted a garden over the weekend, tomatoes, peppers, basil, and marigolds, but a huge wind came through, and then today it stormed a lot and got colder. on the one hand i was glad to get it in before the rain; on the other, i was worried that spindly tomato plants would just buckle right over and die in the steep wind. people were reminded of may 8th and got a little nervous (our storm was may 8, that might have been 2009) and some folks lost more trees. as far as i know the tomato plants survived this one. it is, as we speak, about thirty-eight, but i'm hanging tough and not covering them; that would probably be harder for them to survive in its own way, since i'm clumsy at making a decent tent structure.

everyone is watching the big basketball game i'm sure, but i'm a little jagged from the day, the bog helps a little, but most of all waves of exhaustion come over me and i'm surprised i can do anything even walk around. it's not that the garden was so tough, it's more that i just get tired with a frantic schedule and then i get stubborn, stubbornly unable to keep up a frantic pace. i want to do it at my own rate. i want to write a story or a book. but i want to have enough time, time to plan it out and do it right. time to develop a character.

this one is about the marigolds. i bought them as a superstition; i'd heard that they keep bugs out of a garden, and are used as natural insecticides. i'm not sure which bugs so really i bought them more as a guess, or a tip of the hat to natural things. let the flowers grow around the edges. it may or may not protect the big stuff, but it'll look good. my mom liked that idea. she said, you can't kill 'em. she liked hearing about the garden, and me getting out there in an illinois backyard and turning the earth. at our house, it was mostly clay. but i dumped some sacked-up garden soil in there and off i go; i'm going to have some vegetables.

a daily swim keeps my mind clear, well actually it fills it with chlorine and pool-water but that's better than most of what keeps getting shoved in there, and helf the time if i can't quite hear everything, i haven't lost all that much. it makes me much more tired at night but i settle into a deep restful sleep though my wife complains about the snoring. my hair has grown a little long around the shoulders because i have such trouble making apppointments and am just about unwilling to just go marching into the nearest place, which i could do. the long scraggly hair is more the true me, stubborn, resistant, uncompliant, but it gets too hot in the summer and i have no patience, and besides, i don't really believe in the symbolic value of it, having believed all along, it's just hair, and it doesn't mean a whole lot, and if the old guys in the community can't handle it, it's their problem. so far they seem to be ok with it. the police chief next door is seeing the world with different glasses, he's glad to be alive, and seems to be ok with having neighbors that ask about him and care about him as he gets better from an operation. it will be too hot soon, that's the way april is. april rocks though, some pictures are coming, and once birthday season comes rushing down the japanese-garden waterfall of time, there will be no stopping it, blossoms all over the place, and the birds will be out, waiting for a single worm to show its face in that garden.

the blustery weather rules: cold front, warm front, high wind, drizzle, but i'm so busy, i can barely notice, much less get my bicycle out. wars, and unrest, people dying, where, libya, ivory coast, afghanistan, you name it, seems like a lot of turmoil in the world, and even here at home, people are jumpy, the wind is blowing, and a cold ugly looking thing is developing over the western horizon. spring, though, is god's promise. it will be nice, at least for a week or two. and that, my friends, is the birthday season.