Hanging clean, wet laundry out to dry - an under-appreciated pleasure. We have two long pulley lines out the back: one is accessible from the bathroom window on the main floor of our little house. The second attaches to the house at ground level near the herb garden. We added it 12 years ago when granddaughter A lived with us for several months, to accommodate her cloth diapers - another under-appreciated feature of a bygone era. We hardly use the lower line any more even though I adore hanging out laundry from that fragrant garden. Plus it reminds us of A's babyhood..
This morning I hung clothes out through the bathroom window noting how much grass and garden have emerged from months of snow cover. Of course, I had to grab our fool cat, Randy, as he sprang onto the window sill to take flight 1 1/2 stories straight down. I'm thinking such high-risk behavior smacks of a brain already testosterone-soaked by the time when he was neutered at just under a year old, poor thing.
It's a rite of spring for me, this laundry thing. Like opening the windows so March gales can race through, whipping up dust and sending papers flying. I love it. Bought some fabric for a quilt block project and washed that with today's load. Just-washed fabric generates a lot of loose threads. I snip them off and let them fly away in the wind with the hope some mother bird will furnish a nest with them. As soon as the mud solidifies, I'll be distributing the bag of nesting materials I've accumulated over the winter: strands of knitting cottons & wools, snippets of fabrics & threads, lengths of narrow ribbon, string, what have you. I put small amounts here and there in the woods behind our house, clumps of them on the clothes lines, and inside the shrubberies in the yard. Last summer was the first and only time I've seen a bit of man made textile woven into a nest but it's enough to keep me doing this silly little thing I do
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