Thursday

You know the saying -- never do your grocery shopping on an empty stomach. I'll add to it -- never do online grocery shopping when you wake up at 4 in the morning and think it would be cool to have bake-yourself-croissants delivered to your door by 9. Why? Because that is a lazy way of assuring that you have fresh baked goods for breakfast. You want to spoil yourself with buttery and flakey Viennoiserie pastries? Get up and get going to your local bakery (if there is one within a handful of miles). Skip the frozen stuff from your market.

So now you know how my morning began: very early, very hungrily, with visions of good stuff for the breakfast table. I swear, I'll never take that short cut again. The croissants came. I baked them. They were... indifferent.

Ed was kind: they're not bad! They have a Midwest taste to them.

How so?

Lots of butter and indifferent flour.

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Outside, we have one more day where I can admire sprouting daffodil stems!

Why only one more day? Well, because of what follows in the afternoon and evening -- a sizable snowstorm. 

I don't mind March snow, really I don't. It's really satisfying to see it melt a few days after it piles up on your flower beds. It never harms what little is growing out there. Nonetheless, this year I am mindful that flowers will be arriving within a day or two from the Nursery. Last night I got another email telling me that my strawberry plants are on the way! What the heck am I going to do with strawberry plants in March?

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In the afternoon, I talk to Snowdrop about a particular mean girl in her class. I'm tossing around ideas on how one might shut down a bully, but none of these strategies appeal to Snowdrop, who is adamant that one does not respond to meanness with meanness. To her, even a slight critical stance is mean. So what's left?

Her mom reminds me that the absolute best response to irrelevant criticism is to be like Ed and not care. To give your attention to more important things in life. To be resilient. To know how to pivot in light of adversity.

Yep, this guy can be an effective role model to a kid with a bully in class. 

(In tussling with him, she sometimes forgets what she's up against here...)

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And the snow comes down hard. I drop Snowdrop off at her brothers' school and slowly come back to the farmhouse. Slowly because it is so enjoyable to drive through these last snows of the season. 

At home, I unpack the first box of perennials (arrived today) and I have to smile. Ridiculous timing! But somehow magical too. Snow and flowers to plant -- a truly amusing combination.