Friday - 357th

This is the kind of Groundhogian repetition that I can live with: a wake up to yet another day of sunshine and the lengthening of each day, so that we are now at a 6:26 sunrise and a 5:52 sunset. We are rich with daylight!

With a melting snow cover, I can resume my morning walk across the farmette lands. My path takes me around the pines and back of the barn. This is one of the sunnier spots here, not yet shaded over by the ever encroaching trees. Will we plant a tomato field this year? Will we go ahead with expanding the new orchard?

Probably not. The deer routinely pass through this way every day and we'd have to install significant animal protections  (electric fence? Other?) to have a successful harvest. Right now the thought is to let it go to prairie, possibly mowing down paths. We've been able to control the honeysuckle invasives, but the thistle and the multiflora rose have won in significant parts of these fields. We may just let them be for now. I have too much work this year expanding flower fields south of the barn to focus my energies as well on this wilder northern section of the property.

Breakfast, sunny, delightful.

Soon after, Sparrow arrives for his first visit here in several months!

Unlike Snowdrop and Primrose, the young lad has not had any school time and indeed has literally not been anywhere outside of his home (and the farmhouse earlier on) for a year now. For him, the world has been a small place indeed. For now, at least he has a return to the farmette.

I was mindful of the fact that he may be shy about coming back without his sister. But I have chicks! 

In his time here, Sparrow makes many trips to visit with the chicks.

And, as Snowdrop during yesterday's return, he spends many hours returning to his favorite toys. So familiar, yet fresh too.

 

(Chickens are a high ticket item here these days. Even fake chickens.)

And then we do an afternoon switch: I return Sparrow to his parents and pick up Snowdrop at school. A happy girl indeed!

Did I mention that chickens these days are a source of delight here?

 

 

But not only. Snowdrop picks up again on her story telling aided by her dolls and she returns to her super pig book making. It's funny that she should do this with such love and enthusiasm here, because in the months that she has stayed away from the farmhouse, she did neither at home: no doll stories, no super pigs. It's a world that lives here and waits for her here.

 

Toward the end, she wants an outdoor adventure. By then, I have had my fill of the outdoors. It's not that warm once the sun disappears behind some clouds. Still, she is so determined that I cave. We take a few of her "dressed for winter" dolls, a snack, and her binoculars. 

I'm happy that this child, who can be quite exacting and fastidious, is delighted to make squishy sounds in the mud paths we have here now. (The farmette paths in March are one big squishy mess.

 

Evening. Kids are home, Ed and I are in our same old spots on the couch doing the same old stuff. It's rare these days to just stick with the "same old." But we do. At least in the evenings. Out comes the popcorn. We're set, until one or both of us falls asleep...