March 20th

Hi spring, favorite season of mine (I know, I know -- no favorites allowed!). A season of changes, nearly all of them leading to a more beautiful planet. 

But it needs a little help from us! When Ed asks for assistance in his tree branch cutting project (still working on that one damn branch), I tell him I may be able to fit it in, but it's not a given. 

Immediately after feeding the animals...

And eating our oatmeal and fruit...

I make a list of this week's work. It is not a short list. At the top: putting seeds into those recycled dixie cups we use to germinate tomatoes and this year, too, to give a head start to some of my annuals. 

I look at all my beautiful packets of sees... Well now, here's a problem: they all have different planting dates. two to three weeks before last frost. Four weeks before last frost. Five to seven weeks before last frost. Well that's confusing! I put the flowers aside and we concentrate on the tomatoes, which only have two different sowing dates -- eight to eleven weeks before last frost, and five to six weeks before last frost. 

Okay, we're on it!

And we are so foxy and nimble that we do find time to both attend to sawing the high limb down from the tree (well, we get some of it!) and I have time for a walk, and to hang down from the monkey bars. 

Spring forward indeed!

I pick up Snowdrop at school and I comment on this glorious next season which is now before us. She, of course, has her own thoughts on it: yesterday was the last day of my favorite season, she tells me glumly.

One person's pleasure...

(trying out her own Girl Scout Cookies: the shortbread)

(getting Ed to sample the mint GS cookies...)

(within seconds, she's there wanting to move art around on his computer)

Our routines are a bit different today. The parents have some late work commitments and so Snowdrop and I pick up her brothers at their school together.

Yes, literally "pick them up."

It's rare that I have all three in the car at the same time and I note how the energy level changes when they come together. Suddenly there are frogs, magic persons and dragons. Stories unfold, sounds, some frightening, some delightful float from the far corners of the car. 

And now they are home and I leave them in the care of a sitter as I drive back to the farmhouse thinking about, well, spring. It's a calendar date of course and today could have been no better or perhaps even worse than the day before. But we were lucky: the temps climbed to near 50f (10c). And we have the promise that this is the trend. That the browns will gently take in the greens and small pinkie tips of color will explode into something far richer. 

It's a good time to be here, in south-central Wisconsin. A real magnificent time indeed.