A Bob Dylan Day

Outdoor food is garden food. It's just about that time in the Brainerd Lakes area. There has been no rush because of the cool spring.

I've planted early in the past and the plants just sit there and don't grow.

Finally began turning it over w/ a shovel today. More tomorrow and thursday - expanding my small plot from 6 by 12 to 18 by 12. I want more than what I can eat in season because of the price of fresh produce in the stores these days as well as because of my increasing realization that most of what you get in supermarkets is probably poisoned by pesticides and herbicides. Deeply. I can manage my small plot w/o those poisons.

I have been impatient over the years - a little less now at almost 63. Daily progress over a week will yield as much or more than a long hard driven get it in day. I take the time now and then to scan the sky for eagles ( they're often working the shoreline for fish), or to throw the tennis ball for my brown lab pup. He fetches it right up. I'm counting on him for pheasants in the fall in some local ditches and fields - just he and me, a two man team.

A break for lemonade at 10 AM on the patio is requisite . A morning cigar - not inhaled anymore - and a few pages of reading - AS ALWAYS. JULIA, currently, and Sydney Sheldon's autobiography. If the east wind would stop blowing I would discontinue yard and garden work and cast the shoreline for bluegills using a flyrod with a black gnat. Don't tell anyone.

It's the 24th of May and there is a program on Mn Public Radio entitled " Boy From The North Country" about Bob Dylan's early days and his Mn roots which includes anecdotes and music from back in the day, so I take an early lunch and a beer to savor that. I sit on the patio and crank up the radio. It is great.

A friend calls and intones "rainy days on the great lakes, walking the hills of old Duluth" and does a riff on his harmonica. He has been listening to the same program. What an interlude on what a day.

Thank God for Spring.