Last year, it snowed on Valentine's Day. I have pictures of a blanketed farmette. Winter seemed stubbornly entrenched.
Today could not be more different. Sunshine and a relative warmth. You wake up thinking spring thoughts.
Happy Valentine's Day indeed!
Breakfast bathed in sunlight!
And a morning spent outside. We survey our newly chipped field out back, still a bit clueless as to what should become of it.
How about planting blueberries? Snowdrop said she'd like to grow more blueberries.
What, a whole field of blueberries? So that we're swamped with them for a few weeks? That is if we even succeed in keeping the soil right and the deer at bay...
How about a few blueberries, a few flowers and then some white pines?
It goes on like this. It will go on like this. We cannot come up with a perfect plan.
And so we concentrate on the front yard today. We dump some chips to expand the road-facing flower bed. And then I do some pruning, grumbling the whole while that our trees need serious pruning -- something that I bring up each year, even as Ed dismisses it as totally unnecessary.
At around noon, I pick up a happy Snowdrop.
I know what she would love most right now and I'm quite willing to indulge her -- it's Valentine's Day, no? Stroller time!
We go for a longer walk -- all the way to the more distant coffee shop -- a place she and I hadn't been to since the warmer days of fall.
She needs no reminder about where to find the high chair.
("Can I have a banana?")
Today (well, every day...) I would give you the world, little one!
When I tell her there's a small gift waiting for her at the farmhouse, she is excited. ("I am excited" is definitely in her vocabulary!)
It's not much, really. A few books and a few stuffies that depict the characters from those books (we're on a Piggie and Gerald the Elephant roll and, too, "digesting" the pigeon books by the same author). But Snowdrop has always appreciated each gift handed to her, big or small, and she spends a lovely afternoon introducing her new pals to her world of toys.
("I want to dance with piggie!")
("One more dance!")
There is a tiny bit of a downside to the day: nearly half of Snowdrop's class is out with a virus and toward evening, the little one succumbs to it. Oh, she is sweet as can be, but most of the remaining time at the farmhouse is spent in lap formation.
Sunset. I can't really see it from the farmhouse -- too many trees stand in the way. But if I look out on the fields to the east, the red glow is there.
A fitting color combination. Happy Valentine's Day. With love.
Today could not be more different. Sunshine and a relative warmth. You wake up thinking spring thoughts.
Happy Valentine's Day indeed!
Breakfast bathed in sunlight!
And a morning spent outside. We survey our newly chipped field out back, still a bit clueless as to what should become of it.
How about planting blueberries? Snowdrop said she'd like to grow more blueberries.
What, a whole field of blueberries? So that we're swamped with them for a few weeks? That is if we even succeed in keeping the soil right and the deer at bay...
How about a few blueberries, a few flowers and then some white pines?
It goes on like this. It will go on like this. We cannot come up with a perfect plan.
And so we concentrate on the front yard today. We dump some chips to expand the road-facing flower bed. And then I do some pruning, grumbling the whole while that our trees need serious pruning -- something that I bring up each year, even as Ed dismisses it as totally unnecessary.
At around noon, I pick up a happy Snowdrop.
I know what she would love most right now and I'm quite willing to indulge her -- it's Valentine's Day, no? Stroller time!
We go for a longer walk -- all the way to the more distant coffee shop -- a place she and I hadn't been to since the warmer days of fall.
She needs no reminder about where to find the high chair.
("Can I have a banana?")
Today (well, every day...) I would give you the world, little one!
When I tell her there's a small gift waiting for her at the farmhouse, she is excited. ("I am excited" is definitely in her vocabulary!)
It's not much, really. A few books and a few stuffies that depict the characters from those books (we're on a Piggie and Gerald the Elephant roll and, too, "digesting" the pigeon books by the same author). But Snowdrop has always appreciated each gift handed to her, big or small, and she spends a lovely afternoon introducing her new pals to her world of toys.
("I want to dance with piggie!")
("One more dance!")
There is a tiny bit of a downside to the day: nearly half of Snowdrop's class is out with a virus and toward evening, the little one succumbs to it. Oh, she is sweet as can be, but most of the remaining time at the farmhouse is spent in lap formation.
Sunset. I can't really see it from the farmhouse -- too many trees stand in the way. But if I look out on the fields to the east, the red glow is there.
A fitting color combination. Happy Valentine's Day. With love.
