By the time the parchment-lined baking sheet is in the oven, the drainer is a monument to dish Jenga.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re barely on the sidelines of anyone else’s stories but our own, and that’s on our best days.

It didn’t look like much but as I walked away, I could have sworn I heard someone exhale in relief.

A reality had come home to roost—I was no longer thirty-something with energy to spare.

Our collective attention turned to the home base and away from the grassy prairies of Sundance grounds.

Here I sit in between granola batches and these paragraphs, watching…and learning.

Most years, we don’t let things get so out of control as to need such equipment to tame the garden wilderness.

I hope it’s not arrogant of us to test the grand and natural scheme of things with our piddly little household and land chores.

We’re suckers for this season and she knows it.

Just when you think you’ve got something sorted out, a sudden yank of the rug beneath your feet and there you are, staring upward from your vantage point on the floor.

They sport mostly bunnies and bees, chickens, sunflowers and stripes in various designs from vintage to contemporary.

I chase ideas through the woods, listen for new and returning winged relatives tapping holes into dead trunks and wonder what will be asked of me today.

A handful of robins march in stop-and-start fits across the just-greening grass, stopping to turn a hidden ear to what might be crawling beneath.

What is it about the open space of a meadow or the secrets of a black swamp woods that shift our agendas over to a never-ending list of chores that are truly anything but?

Whatever I might have considered an inconvenience, even on the mild end of the scale, has evaporated.

Would anyone hear the grunting and giggling group as they wrestled a 4x4x6 post from the ground?

We’re all experimenting with what works to get us through a rough day, to not feel guilty about laughing or detaching ourselves if only for the afternoon.

It’s hard to say goodbye to someone when the ground is frozen and you weren’t prepared for the farewell.

I’ll be a happy soul, lost in the white drifts that will most likely seal the backdoor shut until April.