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.

1. Spring. Besides the green and the blooms, you can tell it’s spring in Fort Collins because the river is full up of snow melt.

2. Everything is SO green. It’s almost hard to believe.

One of my favorite spots on the trail

3. Morning walks. It’s so light out now that when we go, not only can I leave my headlamp at home, on Thursday morning I left at 6 am wearing my sunglasses!

4. Sweet Sam. This week at his physical therapy session, he went on the underwater treadmill. He did not love it. He also tried really hard to do some other stuff the tech wanted, but he was too excited/nervous to get it just right. He seems to be getting a bit stronger without getting sore, and I’m so grateful.

5. I finally saw the fox babies!!! This is a terrible picture, taken from far away, but that’s as close as I could get. When we first spotted them, all four babies and their mama were there, but by the time we were close enough to get a bad picture, only the bravest little one was still above ground. Ringo wanted to play with them so bad.

6. Eric. He’s been working so hard this week getting our front garden ready while I finish up my last few days of work.

Bonus joy: Hanging out with Mikalina, a friend coming back to town for the summer, getting all the laundry done on Friday, Pilates, sitting in the sauna after aqua aerobics, dark chocolate, clean sheets, good books (so good they make you stay up really late but you don’t even care that you are tired the whole next day), computer glasses, the smell of lilacs, sleeping with the window open, my new hooded sweatshirt with the picture of a cattle dog on the front that looks like Ringo, another fabulous massage, summer vacation just two more days of work away.