The perfect day dawns: -7C, full sun, windless; this after days of fog.

Pepper eats mouthfuls of frost, then squirms on her back, all fours skyward. Barn cats climb fence posts and snow hills sunning themselves. We tunnel through or slide down Farmer’s great snow mountains and soak in the rays too, playing outside until our ski clothes are soaked through. I bring sandwiches out and the kids glee again: a winter picnic! Best fun ever and it cost us nothing.

Many weeks hold days like this but rarely are they synchronized so we can show up on a Saturday, with nothing else in the way. When everything lines up, that’s magic.

This past week Princess and I sorted through all our seeds, packaging, labelling. We chucked old stuff to the compost. Flats of onions, peppers, and flowers were also seeded. Like a wind-up toy, our little produce engine gears up for another growing season.

I have great expectations, determined this season to work smarter, not harder, find and maintain balance and not let myself become overwhelmed. Farmer laughs at that suggestion.

But a few days ago he paid me the highest compliment ever.

“Doesn’t matter what you do, you put your heart and soul into it. You’ve got passion and it shows up.”

Today is an unusually emotional for me. Call it hormones or the fact that I’m working through some personal issues, facing some limiting beliefs I’ve held unconsciously for many years, but today, as they did when Farmer first said them; these words make me cry.

I couldn’t dispute his observation, nor could I claim that putting my “all” into a project is always the healthiest choice. I guess if my parents taught me one thing it was that if I wanted something done, nobody was doing it for me.

Sometimes the universe just lines things up and it all fits like a pre-punched puzzle; more often, there are obstacles, incongruence and B.S.

Newsflash: I don’t spend my entire life world-changing: protesting the corporate take-over of Canada or environmental destruction. Today was for frolicking. Tonight there are deadlines to meet, meetings to book and still a few seeds to order. I’m growing toward, working toward sustainability, wholesome living.

My most important work is always waiting: my own renovation, loving and accepting myself for what I am, imperfections included, while simultaneously maintaining hope that even I can change.