Saturday

If we spring forward in time tonight, shouldn't we spring forward into springlike weather?  Where is the fairness of below freezing temperatures all weekend long?

Still, with that little bit of sunshine in the morning, you can look up and down and all around and spring may seem not that far off after all.







Breakfast in the sun room, with the tulips that were such a pleasant acquisition yesterday!






And now the day proceeds in a non-weekend fashion: I pick up Snowdrop for a Saturday morning at the farmette.






She wants the outdoor time, but she knows it just doesn't feel great being out and about. Inside the farmhouse we go.
Hi ahah, what are you doing ahah?
I'm fixing the little vacuum because a mouse chewed up a whole big part of it.
Snowdrop stops and you can see her process this bit of information: what? that little creature that is so lovingly portrayed in all the kids' books can eat up a vacuum cleaner??
Look, Snowdrop -- it's just a little corner of the machine. No big deal. Ed -- must you be so honest about everything?

Snowdrop runs off to her play room, putting the thought of mice eating up vacuum cleaners to the side for now.







But she comes back to it. A mouse?






Mice like crumbs, I tell her and then I distract the girl with a new puzzle. She loves new puzzles! This one has magnets, which makes it pretty darn perfect. Ed takes the photo.






And it's the usual then... Music, dancing. With animals...






... with a book, too. She does not discriminate in her choice of dancing partners.






She dances with her whole happy heart.


So that is morning. But how do we treat the afternoon, Ed and I? What's to be done when the air is cold, the landscape so brown and uninviting?

Well, we have to search with eyes wide open. There! You see the sandhill cranes that appear nearly invisible in the fields to the east of us?






We take a walk in the county park just down the road. The little pond has clumps of ice at the sides, but I am not fooled: it's definitely priming itself  for the season just before us.






The big lake (Waubesa) is one full house: geese, ducks, they've all congregated to discuss the politics of life. Perhaps their own strife and struggle is greater than ours. Or maybe they are a content lot, appreciating each others' company, finding join in stuff that you and I can never even see or understand.





I say to Ed - maybe we should go down and study the lives and habitats of penguins.
He looks at me: maybe you should kayak down the Missouri River with me.
Maybe not.

Kids are kids. Mice are mice. Ducks are ducks. And gagas are gagas.