1. Spring. It’s all so GREEN.

Part of why it’s so green is all the rain and snow melt coming down from the mountains. This is a picture of what should be trail, but the river is spilling over and flooding it out.

2. Morning walks. So far, we’ve kept to our regular weekday morning schedule and Sam still can’t go on longer walks, so two mornings a week it’s just me and Ringo (and the deer, raccoons, herons, ducks, geese, etc.).

Can you find the deer?

3. Gardening. Although, especially in the spring in Colorado, it can be heartbreaking. We bought vegetable plants and put them in the ground last week, then one day later we had the biggest hailstorm I’ve ever seen — 15 minutes straight of hail and almost a full hour of thunder and lightening. It destroyed about half of what we planted, which we’ve already replaced. It’s not the first year the hail has wrecked what we started, and we always start again.

That’s not enough basil

I finally got rhubarb!

My irises loved all the rain this year

Eric put wildflower seeds by our front step

I’m going to have a ton of peonies

This was about 10 minutes into the hail storm, when I knew for sure we’d be starting over

Spring in Colorado

4. Ringo and Sam. Ringo had his annual exam and shots at the vet. He hid under my chair. It’s so sad because his vet has three Cattle Dogs of her own, loves them more than any other kind of dog, even took off her white coat and sat on the floor to coax him out from under the chair. She loves Ringo so much but he can barely look at her he’s so terrified. Sam did really well at his physical therapy appointment this week. He’s off all his pain meds and we are increasing his walks and doing more exercises. There’s a chance that if he’s still progressing and doing well in two weeks, he might graduate from needing regular PT appointments. He still seems a bit stiff at night sometimes, so fingers and paws crossed that he keeps getting better.

5. Eric. He’s been doing so much of the hard work to get the garden going. I’m so glad he likes it as much as I do. I’m also glad that he’s happy reading books and taking naps and just hanging out. It makes for a pretty perfect summer.

Bonus joy: Melly is back in Wild Writing, I get to hang out with Mikalina tomorrow, aqua aerobics five times a week, teaching yoga, good books (I’m finally reading the novel The Pearl That Broke Its Shell and loving it, in that particular way you can “love” a book that is about women in difficult situations), good TV (I finally started Fresh Off the Boat and it’s the perfect show to binge during a lazy summer), flowers in the bathroom, the tiny dog that comes out to visit Ringo and I some mornings on our walk, Ringo doing nosework, Sam napping nearby always, toast with marionberry jam, cold clean water, a warm shower, sitting in the sauna, not checking my work email, clean sheets, grocery shopping, Chelsey’s birthday, leftovers.