Right now

Last night while it rained I went outside and took pictures in my garden.  "Right now," I thought, "everything is alive."

Earlier in the evening my daughter and I watched worms dart  into the wet ground when we stomped or jumped; when I went out in the late evening damp they lay there plump and unconcerned, probably knowing all the birds were asleep.  After such a long, cold winter, and a cold, wet spring, it's easy to forget how irrepressible life is, how the push of seeds breaks soil long before we're ready to garden.  I missed a few heads of garlic last fall, and they were up and growing when the ground was half frozen.  I managed to get a few seeds into a the ground on a single sunny day in April, and I nearly forgot about them with the subsequent weather.  And now, when I'm still hoping for enough dry weather to get our garden planted, my peas are nearly a foot tall, and we ate a big bowl of arugula this evening.  If a living thing is given half a chance it grows, flourishes, thrives on air, sunshine, water, and warmth.  The wet air in the evening sometimes carries, in addition to its wet, the knock-me-over inhaled-intoxication of plum blossoms, apple blossoms, lilacs, and all things spring.  Life comes so soon, so quick, and it's here right now.