Rubber Boots and Mud Pies

I carefully set the pie down on the old wooden crate near the edge of the garden.  I stepped back to briefly admire my work and then clomped over to the garden to gather up the ingredients for another pie.  My rubber boots made squishing sounds as they sank into the mud and I clapped my muddy hands together gleefully thinking of all that would be created today.

"We need more mud," my friend called from the playhouse.

"Coming," I replied as I slopped the mud from the garden into my pail.

With my bucket filled, I ran back to the playhouse as fast as my slightly too large rubber boots would let me and saw my friend putting the finishing touches on her mud pie.

Setting my bucket on the makeshift table, I reached for one of the discarded pie plates we had found in the garbage and happily assembled another mud pie.

Welcome to Spring!

Were you a mud pie baker?  Or maybe you were a puddle jumper or a skipping rope aficionado.  Maybe spring wasn’t your time of year...

As soon as the weather would let us, my friend and I would spend hours creating “delicious” mud delicacies.  Our creativity awakened, we would use whatever we could find as containers and had more than one discussion about the exact dirt to water ratio to create the perfect pie.  When our impatience got the best of us and we tried to turn the pie or cake out of it’s mold before it was ready, we didn’t care that we got a gloppy mess.  We just gathered up the mud and make another one.  It wasn’t the end product that kept us so engaged but rather the act of creating, the indulgence in imagination and possibilities, never really caring how many we made or that it wasn’t edible or that the only part of us that was clean was the bottom of our pants where they were tucked into our rubber boots.

Mud pies and rubber boots, to me, are the symbols of Spring.  We are finally coming out of our winter rest full of energy, ideas and dreams to be fulfilled.  It’s time to pull on our boots and get messy!  Spring awakens our innate creativity and asks us to start planting the seeds of our winter dreaming.  Spring doesn’t care if we create something beautiful or functional, if it is gallery worthy or makes money, she simply awakens the longing in each of us and asks us to immerse ourselves in the pleasure of bringing something alive.

Listen for the whisper of Spring.  Is there something you are being drawn to do?  Take a class, improve your health, try rock climbing, learn to make distressed furniture, write your memoir, make stained glass, start an art journal... what wants to come alive in you as you transition into the creative energy of Spring?  I'd love to hear about it!

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