Monday

On the upside, it wasn't a huge amount of snow!

But it did snow last night and the day stayed cold enough to melt most, but not all of it. Initially, the kids were thrilled to see it, though later, Snowdrop complained -- not enough to really play in it and plenty cold!

This cold snap (and another one expected next weekend) delays planting annuals, and the heavy snow really did knock down the daffodils.

Some will come back up again, but some will have to be cut down. But not today. I honestly can't quite focus on any of it today. I'm blocking the sudden return of winter!

Breakfast.

I did finish my taxes then, but just at the last minute. When I see that it's time to pick up Snowdrop, I dash out...

(mostly melting!)

... piece of toast, cup of coffee, purse and fat envelope with the state returns in hand, and of course you should not rush when you are almost 70 and holding all that stuff, because, well, what it you trip and fall? 

So now I have spilled coffee all over the tax returns and my phone too. Damn. I pick up Snowdrop and take her along for an errand to the post office, where I make sure this bulgy and wet envelope will be accepted. The clerk smiles and stamps it wit confidence. Back home, Ed is chuckling: I told you you should have filed the state returns also online! 

Meanwhile Snowdrop is in a great mood, because I let her play with my phone during our wait at the USPS and there is some good in that, because she always then manages to teach me a new trick with it -- this time showing me a string of videos of grandkids, clips I never knew I had because, you know, when you take photos, you forget that on a smart phone, these are actual live saved shot to your device.

(At the farmhouse, she introduces Ed to various aspects of the phone's photo storage capabilities. How she knows these things is a real puzzler, since the girl does not herself have a smart phone. I suppose kids just intuit technology even as we have to study it and learn from scratch.)

Evening: I try not to keep checking, over and over again, the weather for the next few days. I have eight of them before I become totally incapacitated. Will we climb out of the near freezing temperatures? Will I have time to plant annuals? It's going to be close!

Never a dull moment here, on our farmette lands...