first one

Well, it isn't much, but I hereby report the first farmette flower of the year! A Snowdrop. Wimpy, to be sure, but in its defiant stalk and creamy white petals I see hope!

(the snow melts, the growing continues...)

It's a rainy day, so the knee is stiff as a board (not quite sure science has proven a causal link there, but hey, I'm just reporting what's what). I have a late morning appointment that came from me having stayed in a hotel with a good mirror (which we do not have at home). In Chamonix: OMG, what's that mole all about? (Doc takes exactly ten seconds to say -- nothing to cause you worry.) All this means that breakfast is rushed.

And later, we hobble around attending to farmette stuff. Ed makes room in the mudroom for my nursery plants (it appears that if I give them indirect light and some water very rarely, they may survive until planting time).

I keep feeding Pancake, the seventh cat. Why is she eating so much? It has to be either worms -- yuk -- or kittens -- oh dear. In between, there is laundry and there are groceries -- fun stuff that you postpone for a rainy day.

One chore that cannot be finished is the limb cutting. Ed's saw, the one that you throw up to the high branches, is stuck, having sawed off 3/4 of the limb, but failing to finish the job. The limb now poses a mortal danger to anyone who passes underneath. He tells me -- I have two choices: get a drone to finish the job, or wait for a strong wind to bring the whole thing down. Me, I keep wanting to say -- wouldn't it have been easier to have asked those guys to chop this one down, so long as they were here doing another job last week? But this is such a silly question that I pocket it for another time when I want to make a point.

In the afternoon, a very rainy afternoon, Snowdrop is here. She loves the rain...

Nonetheless, she is feeling sulky.

I wish I had a leprechaun visiting tonight! 

Say what? A leprechaun? As in for St Patrick's Day?

Yeah, they mess up the house and put green die in your toilet...

A leprechaun does that?

Well, maybe parents... but maybe a leprechaun! Everyone will be talking about it tomorrow!

So you wish your leprechaun-parents would get up at night and mess up the house, and pour green stuff into the toilet, and you would wake up to the mess, and then they'd spend the morning putting things back in place? This is your dream?

Yeah...

Kids.

Because she has a lesson toward evening, I drive her back to her neighborhood and while there, I visit for a few mins with my daughter. Soon these visits will be outdoors, on the deck maybe, enjoying the last bits of sunshine. For now, we watch the rain come down. But the light is with us! How different this is from the weeks in December and January!

At home, it's soup time again. I have a bunch of collard greens from our winter farmers, which I absolutely have no idea how to serve in a tasty for the both of us way, so into the soup they go, along with the usual unions, peppers, beans. Anyone would tell you that a hambone would be a superb addition here, but that's not going to happen. We pass a pig farm each time we go to the county park. I have nothing but great sorrow for the way they live (in a small pen) and for the fate that awaits them. 

Evening. So beautiful now, with the melting snow, the wet cleansing that the rain brought to our lands. 

with love...