Spring Ritual

I have a little ritual. I only do this once a year. It has to be in spring, just when the weather begins to turn mellow and there is that lovely fresh smell in the air. I'm not even sure why it has to be in spring, but that's when I have a craving for it: I make potato salad for lunch! Just for me. No one else in my family likes it, so I never make it. Except once a year. In spring. I've done this for a number of years.

Today was the day! Birds singing, trees leafing, grass greening.

[Note chickadee in opening.]

No one was at home but me. I boiled two eggs and a few potatoes. When they had cooled, I got some green onions from the garden (yes, the green onions have to appear before I make it) and chopped them up, together with some bread-and-butter pickles. I combined sour cream, mayonnaise, salt and pepper, and a bit of pickle juice and poured this over my chopped potatoes, eggs, pickles, and green onions, mixing it well. A cup of hot tea to accompany my salad and I was set.
Everything went out onto the deck, including today's paper which I had not yet opened. I had a lovely quiet hour and felt all was quite well in my world, in spite of what I read in the paper ... all that "trumped" up stuff in the news, people writing to the advice columnist about horrible problems, sadness and grief ... somehow it didn't bother me. It was spring and I had potato salad out on the deck!

Of course, I had to go for a walk after indulging myself. It was dusk before I found time to walk around the nearby lake. The sky was a beautiful slate color with a hint of pink, just after sunset. Trees were in various stages of leafing, and a bird was just going crazy, singing its heart out at the top of a tree.

I noticed a sea gull swooping down and saw it had something in its beak. I wondered what it was. Moving closer, I noticed it was a small fish, about the length of my hand. I wanted to take a picture, but I got too close and it fled to the other side of the lake. There it stood and gorged itself. Kind of like me with my potato salad, I thought. 

On my way back, just as I was about to cross the road, I saw an elderly man wheeling a barbecue down the sidewalk. I silently hoped that he would not be eating the meal he was planning to barbecue all by himself. The sea gull and I could have joined him with our potato salad and fish! What a hilarious time we would have had! And what stories we could have told each other! But that's for another time. Today was my day for me and my potato salad!

Spring has sprung!