green

So let's start off with the green stuff.

I have absolutely no Irish blood in me (unless my ancestors had some dalliance that was not then revealed to future generations) and no real reason to treat St. Patrick's Day in any special fashion. There was a time when I danced a made up jig with the daughters and we all wore green and I frosted cakes with green icing (wait, did I even do that, or do I now imagine myself to be that dedicated a parent?), but those days are gone. I am, as we speak, wearing a sage green hoodie, but the truth is that I have two warm hoodies and I wear one or the other all winter long. No, Ed hasn't noticed the monotony of my clothing choices.

So, what's with the references to green? Well, the snow has melted once again and no new dusting is in the cards for the next few days and so I am once again on the lookout for emerging daffodils, tulips, hyacinth and whatever other bulbs I may have planted. (I never remember come March what went in back in October.) It's awfully cool to be on the prowl for spring growth. Honestly, it's what makes March-April tolerable here, in Wisconsin.

Breakfast is rushed once again because old people that we are, there are appointments to scurry to immediately after.

(Does he look disheveled? Yes he does.)

And afterwards, I get lost in thought -- trying to imagine what this year will bring for the two of us. In reading about what my knee will be like once it is replaced, I see that it may be an interesting adjustment into a different kind of athleticism. And still, there will surely be travel. I feel that hurry to get it in and I explore some possibilities today and honestly -- they all seem great to me! 

And this kind of thinking, browsing, imagining can take a huge chunk of time out of your day. It's a retired person's delight! Dreams of gardens (our box of seeds arrived yesterday!), dreams of far away places. 

[If you are like me and love the idea of browsing through the possibilities -- both for your garden planting and for your future travel, then you will enjoy this from a New Yorker article about the joys of reading seed catalogues:

Seed and garden catalogues sell a magical, boozy, Jack-and-the-beanstock promise: the coming of spring, the rapture of bloom, the fleshy, wet, watermelon-and-lemon tang of summer.... They make strangely compelling reading, like a village mystery or the back of a cereal box. Also, you can buy seeds from them.

Indeed! And so I browse, and dream.]

Before I know it, it's time to pick up Snowdrop!

She seems to have let go of her leprechaun fantasies, and indeed, she comes out of the school beaming with radiance.

Maybe it's the self-plaited braids, maybe it's the absence today of the lead mean girl. She claims it's St Patrick's. It was wonderful! Not quite sure what stardust hit her school hours but for sure it stayed with her through the close of the day.

At the farmhouse, we read.

And once I've deposited the girl with her family, I slowly drive home, reveling in the fact that we are now in the second half of March. How good is that!

And a Happy St. Pat's Day to you too!