love

Without question, just as numerous films and stories in literature tell us -- love is everywhere and the good days are ones when you can recognize its ever brilliant face.

Why bother then with that pinky pink heart speckled holiday, St. Valentine's?

Well because! It's February, darn it. Please, give me a reason, any reason, to make this day, this cold cold cold day feel bright, snuggly warm and special!

Yes, I know that love is an everyday feast. You don't need cupid cards and chocolates and roses to spell out L-O-V-E. And yet, I am reminded of that wonderful love scene - the one from the movie Love Actually, the montage of people greeting their loved ones at the airport with hugs and kisses and I think -- you could do a montage like that of all the people going with their beloveds to a restaurant on Valentine's Day just because that act, too, expresses love. A hug at an airport, a dinner on this red heart day -- it's all symbolic, but then, so many of our sweetest acts toward each other are symbolic and it surely is magnificent that we do them shamelessly, happily, to express the more noble emotions often buried within us.

Ed, however, is not a person who will look for opportunities to express feeling. You have to nudge him a little. In past years, we would do goofy things like go to the card store and pick out a Valentine's Day card together. One card, from the scant rejects that no one had purchased by the day itself. Do you like this one? -- He'd ask. Only if it expresses your feelings -- I'd retort. He'd sigh, put it back and search for another. Nothing seemed to say "I'm am a guy who has lived six decades plus some odd years without having to express anything, but here I am, wanting you to be happy so yeah, I suppose I have some feelings and they're positive  and you know what they are so do I really have to say more?"

This year, he volunteered again to go for "that card" shopping with me, but I felt I could give him a pass, since when he woke up, the first words out of his mouth were "Happy Valentine's Day." Which made me smile.



(a very cold Valentine's Day)


We ate our usual breakfast in the front room -- now made all the more magnificent by the suddenly blooming orchid (I keep the huge orchids in the sun room where it's darn chilly right now, so I am guessing they like those bracing temps).










Ed asked if I'd like to go to the movies, but the films I want to see are on the depressing end of the continuum, so to this, too, I said no thank you.

And so, like the cheepers who refused to leave their coop for more than a minute, we stayed home. We watched a double feature: A Room with a View (well, only half of it -- there's only so much that I can torture Ed) and Silver Linings Playbook (which we'd seen already on some other "it's about time we went on a date!" moment), and Ed popped corn, and the winds howled, and the temps kept falling, but inside, the daffodils and tulips bloomed and the rooms felt toasty warm.

Our grocery store had been selling lobster tails for $8 again and I bought two and made a meal of lobster, potato and corn. (You needed the potato to fill you up, as the lobster tails were only 4 oz. each.) And the Spanish bubbly, Cava.






And if all this isn't enough sweetness, the young parents brought Snowdrop over to the farmhouse so that they could join the legions of restaurant eating lovers and have a little celebration of their own. Love is everywhere indeed!

And so I'll end this love tinted post with a few Snowdrop pics. That lovely little one can set a smile on the most serious of faces.



(big Ed, back in action)





(hey, I'm soooo big too!)





(on pink elephant sheets)


Happy Valentine's Day, with love!