8:37 a.m.

Yes, it’s Tuesday. I stand laughingly corrected.
I rolled over in bed this morning and thought “God, I love Saturdays. And Sundays. Sigh.”

Barney’s sweet face appeared next to mine.
“Good morning!” I said. “What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“You’re up early.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, on the weekend you could sleep in, you wouldn’t have to be up yet.”
“You think it’s the weekend?” he asked incredulously.
“Oops.”

11:58 a.m.

We kissed and hugged goodbye and Farmbeau went out the door, off to town to spend the day working. I phoned Petra to tell her we are coming in Friday night and invite her to come to a wedding party with us Saturday night.

When my eye caught a movement outside the window, I looked out and there was Farmbeau with a posthole-digger, preparing a place to install the post for the mailbox we are setting into a flowerbed sort of arrangement. I quickly threw on some shorts (mosquitoes have abated somewhat) and went out to see if I could help, but there wasn’t much I could do.

So I thinned out the morning glories newly sprouted around the location of the post, took them out to the garden acre, and set them into the ground near the sunflowers Barney and I transplanted last night. I scattered some wildflower seed around the periphery of the little bed we scraped together, and gave them all a good watering. Then I walked over to the vegetable garden.

There, I enjoy the most satisfied and surreal peace from standing in one spot and surveying the rows of tiny corn, bean, potato, tomato, pepper, strawberry, and pea seedlings that were not there just a week or two ago. I literally throw my head back and thank the sky for bringing me here, making me feel so alive, so part of life. I breathe deeply in, and squeeze out a grateful tear.

When I went to the garden to thin the corn, beans, and sunflowers last night, I made Barney come with me. He complained that he did not want to go, but I put him to work thinning sunflowers (I can’t bear to throw the thinned-out ones away, that seems too wasteful and cruel) while I relocated two-inch cornstalks to a new row. We were on opposite sides of the garden, as sunflowers and corn do not “like” each other, but I could hear him talking to the plants.

“There you go, little fella! You’re going to make new friends now!” and “Here’s a little drink of water to get you through the night.”

I smiled at the way talking to the plants comes naturally to him and, a little later, while he was sowing another row of peas and I was setting transplanted corn into the mix (these two like each other and the peas will climb on the corn), I told him that I believe the plants like it when you talk to them and that they respond by being healthier than they might otherwise be.

His eyes got big and round. “Really? You mean they understand what you are saying?”

“Yeah. Well, they feel it somehow. You don’t even have to speak out loud, you can just think certain thoughts and they pick up on it, they sense it. I don’t know if it’s true, but I read this book about measuring the minute vibrations of plants, and they did experiments proving that plants responded to human thoughts by vibrating faster -- really fast -- if a person even visualized lighting a match and burning their leaves.”

“Wow! Well, if you say it’s true, it must be true,” he said.

“I’m not always right, you know. It might not be true. I happen to believe it is, but I could be wrong.”

“Mom, if you think it’s true, I believe it,” he insisted.

What must it be like to be Farmbeau, to come home to his yard and his house full of people and so different than it was?

First, he walks past the pots of petunias and marigolds blooming outside the door. Inside the porch, there’s a pretty, quilted tablecloth on top of the deep freeze.

Then, hanging on the wall where he mounts the stairs into the hallway, there’s the framed image of Barney proudly holding a miniature unicorn on the palm of his hand. As Farmbeau passes by the bathroom door, he can glimpse a countertop jumbled with bottles and boxes and baskets and baubles.

In the kitchen, things have migrated to a new order and often there is the warmth and aroma of something in the oven or atop the stove. Every shelf in the fridge is full. There’s a tablecloth on the table, and a fancy-cut, stemmed, green glass bowl in the centre of it. Four wooden chairs are tucked in neatly around the table itself.

The living room is now an office. There are several plants. On the wall is a framed picture of flowers, made of square tiles. In a vase there are flowers made of macaroni. There are new curtains. There are bookshelves and neatly stacked books. There is an antique china cabinet displaying colourful dishes behind a delicate door made of wood and glass.

No need to go on about bunkbeds in the boys’ room and brass pieces and beeswax candles on the window ledges and a loaf of homemade bread on the cutting board. I just hope he’s happy about it all, that it still feels like home.