Wednesday

At last, we wake up to a warm morning! We're moving into the next stage of spring. Yes, our daffodils are mostly past their blooming period. The fruit trees, too, are shedding petals. Today, our beautiful crabs created a lovely path of white flowers. (The cheepers appreciate its beauty, I'm sure of it.)






Tulips are staggered: some bloom with the daffodils, some hold off until later.  The lilac is in its full show mode, but it's got competition for your gaze! Today, among all this beauty, I find that the first irises are exploding!






Still, let me continue to pay homage to that lilac. It truly is a queen of spring. We eat breakfast on the porch, bathed in the lilac's fragrance. (Our breakfast, therefore, is very, very long!)






(Yes, a few twigs always make it to the table.)






(Henny among the lilac blooms...)






After, with full confidence that a frost threat is behind us, I do my annual seed planting. This always includes nasturtium. Pink for the front garden, gold and orange in the courtyard gardens. Cosmos. You need cosmos to keep you happy in, say, September. Lupine -- I'm trying to intersperse these seeds among a planted lupine patch by the strawberry beds. Poppy seeds from Giverny. Sweat pea for around the tee-pee (where, too, the vegetable pea has already been planted).

All this fills my morning. But I work my way through most of my seed packets. Yes! We're onto spring part 2!


I pick up a ready-for-adventure Snowdrop. Sometime in the course of the day, she shed her leggings and it was determined that neither those nor socks are necessary for this day (that reaches something like 66F, or 19C). Okay, I'm agreeable.

Outside, she explains to me who is who among the handful of kids picked up at this hour. That's "insert name of child here" and that's his mommy and they're going home in his stroller. Identifying proper ownership and relational ties is very important to the little girl.






Snowdrop definitely has an agenda. Almost always she asks about a treat in the coffee shop. Sometimes I'm agreeable, other times, like today, I pack a snack for her and we head to the playground. Yep, the swing is her main focus, her love, her exhale moment.






It's supposed to rain this afternoon but we are lucky. When we finally arrive at the farmette, the skies look ready for rain, but it's holding back, as if willing to wait, just to give Snowdrop what she so desperately wants...






Being barefooted offers a new set of experiences for her. Oh, sure, she'd walked through sand without shoes before, but that was last summer. When you're two, you don't necessarily remember last summer.






From Ed: she sure does love playing in the sand...






Yes she does! I tell her that I'm feeling the first drops of a shower. Snowdrop insists on staying to create her own shower of sand...






She herself is filled with sand, and for a moment I wonder if a bath is in order. We work out an easier quick fix: I use the watering can to clear her legs and hands of the fine crystals.

Inside -- oh, the usual...






You wont notice the subtle differences in these photos that recall similar moments from past days, but they're there. For example, Snowdrop is onto a new Alfie book and this one definitely has appeal for me: it's about the little boy's adventures with his grandma. The little one asks for it now every day. There's high drama in this particular story: a neighbor's turtle disappears!






The afternoon passes quickly. Snowdrop naps, she wakes up in her dozy tussled state...






... eventually she goes home. And I move on to dinner prep. But my attention drifts to the outside world.

Think of the changes that have occurred in just the last weeks! From a brown canvas, to all this. It's all so extraordinary!