Tuesday

I plan ahead. Mostly it pays off. I get advance purchase deals on hotels. Sometimes, good airfares can be snapped if you're prepared to grab them when they pop up. I have a vision of my schedule for next week, next month, and yes -- to some extent, even next year. (Go ahead and laugh: I, too, think it's pretty funny.)

But sometimes my looking ahead backfires. Classic case: planning a trip for right now (departure: yesterday), at a time when I didn't know it would be raining grandchildren for me this spring.

A more trivial example would be scheduling appointments for this morning and then waking to beautiful weather -- the kind where you want to really plunge into garden work. I grumble about this to the appointment persons, as if it's their fault that I picked May instead of, say, March for these things. Still, there went the morning.

By the time I am done and Ed and I sit down to breakfast (on the porch!), it feels more like lunch.







From our vantage point, we can look out on a successful little clump of tulips. They survived the chompers, probably because they're late and came up when the garden had an abundance of other treats for hungry growing families of rabbits, chipmunks and the like.






And all around us, there are the magnificent daffodils! It's hard to believe that a month ago, all was brown, frozen, forbidding.






Look up and you'll see the ancient pear from the old orchard, reaching out and up to the giant willow.






In the afternoon, it turns very very warm. Summer weather. Shorts and sundresses weather. Good weather for a frolic with Snowdrop! And the chickens. The big girls. The little ones haven't caught on to the concept of frolic just yet.






(picking violets)










(running...)






I take out the wading pool.






(she tells stories...)






Inside again. It's a day of hair changes. Down, up, pony tail, pig tails.

I have something for you, Snowdrop.
What?
Well, there's this woman who lives far away and she makes wreaths. ("Crowns" in Snowdrop parlance.) I asked her to make you one with pink flowers (meaning, I ordered one on Etsy).
Where does she live?
Far away.
In Asia?
Actually in Europe. Close to Poland. (The woman lives in the Ukraine -- not a county I've identified for Snowdrop yet.)

The girl loses herself in her story. About tomatoes and pig tails and a crown from Asia. (!)






And in the evening she returns home and Ed and I return to our world outside.