Tuesday, February 18, 2014

hooked

Hooked on travel. On good foods. On books. Hooked on cultivating flowers. And vegetables. And berries. On skiing with Ed. On talking to daughters. On writing things down. Hooked on long breakfasts on the porch, or in the sun room. Hooked on laughter.

The usual suspects.

Then there are the blocked pleasures -- ones I could easily get hooked on, so it's best to mostly stay away from them (because history has demonstrated that, when faced with these, I can wilt): catalogs of perennials. J.Crew on line. Fine wines, especially white burgundies. And champagnes. Beautiful country inns. Brunches with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. Free range and from sustainable fisheries. Lobster. Mysteries.  Fine cotton bed linens dried in sunshine (and without a cat sleeping on any of them after). Quality chocolate covered raisins. Cafes en plein air. Without smokers nearby.

Here's one: spring-like days.

We haven't had a day with above freezing temperatures at all this year, have we? And so of course I was looking forward to today: a high of forty. With gentle sunshine.

You didn't have to prod me to jump out on the porch roof and push the snow off this morning. (Such pretty views today! And without the bite that causes you to hurry and get things done already,  so you can get back inside.)


farmette winter-3.jpg



Breakfast in the sun room...


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(This is after we catch yet another mouse! Sigh... We appear to have a highway through here: one comes in, we catch it, releasing it miles away, the second one comes... and so on and so forth.)


farmette winter-18.jpg


And later, just after noon, when it really feels so much like it's already spring, we do a cross country loop.


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And this is, of course, troublesome, because having tasted it, savored and bathed in it -- I want it oh so much: the arrival of spring. All that rhapsodizing about the beauty of February? Fine, but that was yesterday. Today I want March. Preferably a warm March, a sunshine filled March. Or at least a February day with March like weather. For keeps.


farmette winter-25.jpg



So I'm hooked on spring now and that's not good because after this warm-ish interlude, we're back to the cold, the windy, the nippy, chilly, biting, freezing stuff. And that's a shame.


farmette winter-28.jpg



On the upside, my girl and her husband are over for dinner and the day is so long now -- a whole hour longer in the evening and a half hour longer in the morning -- that's no peanuts!


 farmette winter-4.jpg


And so we're in a good place and life continues to progress kindly and grant generous rewards each hour, each minute, even each winter minute.

Still, that taste of spring... Mmmm... More, I want some more!