Wednesday

Things are speeding up. The next six weeks, maybe eight weeks promise to be wild, even as Ed and I have just talked about how much we've come to love a slower pace. The trick is to alternate: a few weeks of chaos followed by maybe a month or so of calm. Of course, you can't always schedule your crazies. You just have to learn to enjoy them. And I do enjoy them. (Then I crash!)

This morning there is a threat of rain. Nonetheless, the chickens are out, including rusty, ancient Peach, who ventures out of hiding for the first time in weeks! (Then she gets stuck and I have to carry her back to the barn.)

Ed and I eat breakfast...

And then he asks me for help with his tree branch cutting project. And I do help him. We saw away at the high limb (with a loooong rope that has a saw in the middle) and we finally bring the sucker down. How long did it take? A week of work? More? Shush!

(plump flower buds, already!)

I am up to my neck with projects that absolutely positively have to be completed in the next two days and the rest of the morning is spent on those. All the way until it is time to swing by one more appointment that I have before picking up Snowdrop.

During this medical visit where we chat about all sorts of things past present and future, the topic of travel with grandchildren comes up. There is a nurse practitioner-in-training who sits in, taking notes. She's the one who asks me (as I chat about travel as a senior, especially travel with a child as a senior) -- at what age do you think it's good to take a child to, say, Europe? (She obviously is a mother of a potential candidate for such a trip.)

What a loaded question! I can tell you all sides of this dilemma, because I have surely experienced all sides -- from traveling with the young family when Snowdrop, then Sparrow were just babes, to the joy of having your young one come to an age where she can be distracted, nay, dazzled by videos, making for an overseas flight where you can relax.) 

Since this medic in training was clearly hungry for details, I told her that of course, the personality of the child helps you imagine what trip is least stressful for you and most educational for her or him. Snowdrop with each passing month has proven herself to be more adaptable to the stress of "when things go wrong." But she can be a picky eater and I reflect on that a bit. "She doesn't like it when different foods run into each other..." I tell the spellbound medical person.

Oh, no problem in our house! I'm used to that! My husband is the same way!

Wait, what?? He never grew out of it?? Damn! That's discouraging!

And then I do pick up the girl under consideration and bring her to the farmhouse.

We have a bit more car time today for various irrelevant and confusing reasons. I talk to her about the article I read in the NYTimes about what kids (ages 11-14) want adults to know about their thoughts, feelings, and such. I ask her the questions that the author had asked a focus group of twelve kids. 

The upside -- she definitely likes being a kid and does not wish for a fast track to adulthood (this is true for most of the kids interviewed for the piece as well). The sad moment came when I asked how she felt about security lockdowns in school.

She had had such a lockdown just yesterday. Indeed, when I came to pick her up, the whole school was eerily closed off. No kids, no staff in or around. My daughter texted me that they were on lockdown because of some "incident" nearby. 

I questioned Snowdrop about it immediately after she was let out and she seemed then to be just fine, brushing it of as one of those things. But then she went to Girl Scouts and the kids started in on the topic and she admitted today that after that meeting, she felt scared. 

Why? I asked.

Because they talked about killing people and guns.

Yeah. Tell me about it...

In the evening I cook up a huge pot of chili. For Ed, for next week, when I will be away.

With love...

Tuesday

Second day of spring! Can you tell?

Well alright. There isn't that much evidence of it yet. Farmette crocuses wont bloom until early April and the first daffodil wont open up until around my birthday (two thirds into the month). For now, I admire the green tips! They are everywhere!

Breakfast. With Ed and with Dance.

The rest of the morning is spent on finessing plans for spring break. They are complicated! And, too, Ed and I sneak in a brisk walk at noon, and I swing on the monkey bars, and Ed tries to swing as well, only he is too tall, and so he has a ready excuse to give up on that.

In the afternoon a very excited Snowdrop gets in the car after school, telling me that, of all things, there is a school-wide talent show in a few weeks and though it was too late to sign up, guess what, her teacher made an exception and so yes, she's in the program!

What's your talent? -- I ask, realizing that it sounds a bit like a put down and I surely do not intend that. The girl has many talents, but what might she want to display on a stage?

Violin of course! 

And again I rack my brain trying to remember if I'd ever heard her play and yes, I did, once, on her very first recital where she played the piece she has been working on for a long time because yes, it takes a while to move on when you're full of enthusiasm for your lesson, but do not have the time to practice. 

Still, she does love her instrument. And so what that it's a simple ditty! This is an elementary school talent show, grades K - 4. How many people are playing Mozart in that age range? Oh, yes, well Mozart himself, but he is no longer with us so I think we are safe.

Ballet today. Hair done. Next, the rest of it.

On the ride to dance class she spells out all the instruments she'd like to learn to play. Flute. Piano. Too, she'd like to sing. And clarinet, because her dad was a clarinetist. I remind her of the book we read about a girl who was overcommitted. Maybe I can wait on the flute, she speculated.

It's funny about kids -- their choices are based on a sense of satisfaction they get from doing a certain activity, no? And yet, much as I saw great leanings toward music in both my daughters, I'd never recognized this yearning to do real music in Snowdrop. This means nothing of course. I'm just the grandmother and we spend so much time on stories -- read, told, you name it -- that I can hardly be surprised that there isn't time for art or music or any of it, not while she is at the farmhouse anyway. But, a child's enthusiasm for learning and performing music can only be a good thing and so I'm sure I'll be in the audience along with her family, enjoying an April evening of... elementary school talent.

(Watching her dance through a one way viewing window that obviously isn't so "one way")

In the evening she has Girl Scouts, which, too, she loves. Really loves. Cookie sales went well because grandparents are avid supporters of the youthful entrepreneurial spirit. She is on a Brownie roll!

At home, I reheat a leftover frittata and mull over the way life takes us in so many unpredictable directions. And that's a good thing, don't you think?

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.

 

energetic

I was up and out like a firecracker. No cats in the house? Great. Change torn sheet on bed. (Would you believe it -- we have only one, and on laundry day I wash it in the morning to have it ready by evening. Not surprisingly, it wore it out!) Hmmm. Dusty underneath the bed. Vacuum. It's Ed's job, but he's busy swinging saws at a tree limb. (You cannot say that Ed lacks patience, nor perseverance!) Change torn blanket on couch (same thing: one cover to protect the couch; once it gets thread bare, it's time to replace it). Change torn bathroom mats (ditto: 18 years of overuse). Feed the animals.

Why the energetic movement? Oh, it's the last day of winter and the sun is out and though it's still nippy,  it is one hell of a gorgeous day. Makes you want to get things done!

Breakfast: oatmeal for him, almond croissant for me. I notice that Ed is getting beyond shaggy.

Time for a haircut and beard trim. I take out my shears.

Back to work, this time outside. The new orchard trees need pruning. Today. Ed does help me with this. I'm too short to do most of what needs to be done. 

As we work on trimming, I have to shake my head at the uniqueness of this grove of fruit trees. The cherries outperform everything else. The pears in some years are great. Last year they were almost nonexistent. The apple trees? Some produce apples, but they are not good apples. The plums? We're six years into the project and I have yet to see a single plum. Still, it's a lovely little grove and the pollinators like the spring blooms. We are hoping that the new peach grove by the barn will give us a better yield. (We've been very lucky with peach production at the farmette!)

Prune, snip, clear. But not for terribly long. Ed noted that each year, the work bursts are shorter and the rests that follow are longer. Time for a rest!

In the evening, the young family is here for supper. 

It'll be a month before we all sit around the kitchen table again. We all have loaded Sundays coming up. In this month, the landscape will be transformed, of that I am sure. Good bye, winter -- you've been decent to us here, in south-central Wisconsin this year. Time for you to take a pause now. Tomorrow we come into spring.

beneath the surface

Just a cold, very cold March Saturday. Likely the coldest day we'll have between now and, say, November. So, really cold.

I go straight from the shower to feed the animals in the barn. My hair freezes instantly.

Very cold. 

Still, I had put in an order at Madison Sourdough, so I get in my car, regretting that I'm wearing only a hoodie and that my mittens are inside the farmhouse. Lake Monona is mostly thawed, but the nigh freeze has put some ice back on at least part of the waters' surface.

(out the car window)

A warm bakery is like a slice of heaven.

And then we eat breakfast. I tell Ed that wild horses wouldn't pull me out again today. 

He is a little disappointed in both the cold and the wind. Yesterday, Amazon delivered his purchase of a drone ($26). Last night he drove us all (meaning me and the cats) nuts by practicing navigation inside the farmhouse. He has this idea that he can use it to send a fish line over the high limb of the tree where the saw is stuck. Eventually he can feed a rope along with the fish line and pull on that to bring the branch down. But he cant do any of it on a cold windy day.

If you think this is a bit of a wild idea, let me assure you that Ed has a lot of ideas and they run the range from designing solutions around real or imagined problems to implementing strategies for effective ... well, whatever! 

Perhaps it is unfair that in Ocean, I focus on the daily silliness that really forms so much of our daily life together. I bypass the more serious work that takes place here. For example, right now, Ed has (basically singlehandedly) taken on the redesign of the precision metal milling machine manufactured by the company that he and his former partner founded. If his ideas succeed, such machines would enter a whole novel level of production capabilities. He may even strike a few punches at the one competitor in the market place -- a company that PBS accused last week of continuing to do machining business in Russia, despite the war waged by Putin against the Ukraine. I don't write about this stuff because it's his story and one I'm likely to get wrong in the details (despite his patient explanations, I will never fully grasp the language of machine design). Besides, it's more fun to describe the cinnamon rolls we share for breakfast. Still, beneath that very scary bearded countenance, there rests a very sweet and brilliant soul.

That sweet person nudges us to go out and walk, but I stand firm. It is just too cold.

(even the birds look like they're shivering, which, believe me, is very hard to capture in a photo)

I hunker down to my reading and browsing until guilt overtakes me. 

Fine, I'll walk.

Twenty minutes later I am at home again. I mean, winters here are significantly colder than what we have here today, but I'm done with winter and I stored away my warmest jacket. I'm not impatient with the slow crawl toward spring, I'm just not going to pretend walking with an arctic wind in my face is fun anymore. Save it til November!

In the evening I have to make a frittata. It's the only dish I prepare that uses up almost a carton-ful of eggs and our girls are producing like possessed. Why we signed up for another hen come June is a real puzzler -- I guess we really did expect to lose one this winter! Thankfully, once the outdoor farmers market resumes (in four weeks -- can you believe it!), we'll start trading eggs for cheese again.

In the meantime, out come the spinach, the mushrooms, the corn, the cheese, and... the eggs.

Tomorrow, we'll cross the freezing mark into spring like territory once more. Each day brings us a little closer to the splendid growing season.

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!

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...

old habits

It's hard to recognize in yourself traits that are abhorrent to you. If you hate grumbling in others, you're not going to want to admit to ever grumbling yourself. If you think that people are wasteful eaters, then you wont see in yourself your own food fussiness.  We like to believe we can do better than our mortal foes. 

And yet, I had this thought as I fixed breakfast this morning: Ed is a fussy eater. I've lived with him for nearly 18 years and I never quite allowed myself to say this before. I mean, the guy will eat leftovers that I wouldn't touch anymore for their age and decrepitude. At the same time, he'll appreciate a plump mussel, a perfect croissant, a gently baked piece of fish. He's not fussy, I would reassure myself. He just has a good sense of seasonal foods and he hates waste.

I changed my mind on all that today, as I ticked off all the foods I've made that he has claimed to be not good enough for a rerun going forward. Cakes that are too sweet, or too buttery, cookies that are too chewy, veggies, all kinds of veggies, meats -- most meats. Eggs that are too wet, berries that are underripe or overripe, mangos that are too sour, breads that don't have enough seeds or have too many. 

Of course, I've adjusted my cooking to meet his palate. The stuff I make he loves, praises, and eats in large amounts. But I have come to realize that I do not like adding new stuff to the rotation, because I can't tell if it will hit him right and no one wants to spend time preparing something that will be reluctantly consumed. I'd rather just do the stuff I know he'll love. 

Moreover,  I have done the same with the grandkids -- I pander to them by repeating the menus on Sunday, because I'd rather prepare favorites than try out new recipes and watch them work their forks reluctantly around their plates. I leave experimentation to the parents!  But all this has consequences for me: I have, in my own estimation, become a boring cook. (Today, I baked the beloved by all blueberry muffins... Have I made my point?!)

The rewards of repeat cooking are great. Snowdrop wrote me a letter (class project: write a letter) telling me how much she loves my cooking. Ed will gobble up our "favorites" as if he hadn't eaten for years. Perfectly crunchy cookies disappear with the speed of lightening. His favorite chili, made with his garden tomatoes is always treated like stuff for royalty.  So why would anyone risk messing with adored perfection?

Because it's boring. 

Of course, Ed would (and did over the breakfast today) protest to high heaven: I am not a fussy eater! Sure I have preferences! What's wrong with that??

Nothing, unless there are too many items in the "not to my taste" column.

From the standpoint of the cook -- it's not hard to lose one's culinary creativity. Much easier to fall into rote methods of food preparation, repeating recipes that you could do with eyes closed. My fish dishes have the same sauce served at the side because Ed loves that sauce above all other sauces. Still, I think at this point, I'd trade ease for enthusiasm for the new. A flip through a cook book and a suggestion -- make this dish! Or, let's try that one!

As I thought about how to cook going forward, I wondered if Ed's generation, raised on packaged, prepared foods, over-salted and over-sweetened, developed a craving for a sterile, dry kind of food. And a distaste for most vegetables because the caning industry really did kill a love of fresh and honest. By contrast, in Poland, fussy eating was of another world. Prepared foods were unknown. The diet was bland, but we all really did eat everything. 

Since Ed was put on notice by me about his fussiness, he has tried to reverse the image that he himself hates -- of a person who rejects perfectly acceptable foods. He dug into the leftover (overcooked) Brussel sprouts as proof of his open-mindedness! Still, as we get older, it becomes harder to shift gears. He's 72. I doubt he'll ever gobble up zucchini ("tasteless"), gnocchi ("too doughy"), or pureed soups ("I don't like the mouthfeel"). He'll overcook his hardboiled eggs (they stay in the hot water forever! Like, overnight!), but will tell me repeatedly that mushrooms are best not raw ("awful") and not browned, but somewhere in between. I considered it a victory when he changed his mind about salad dressing ("I like yours after all. Can we go back to that?"). And on the upside, repeating favorites does make for easier cooking -- dinner always takes an hour to prepare. At most 90 minutes. With my eyes closed.

Later in the morning, Ed is out with his high branch saw. You throw it up and then use a rope to saw off a branch. I leave him to his throws...

... and go for a walk in the neighborhood. 

(farmette lands, from the back)

I run into a couple of people who live in the new development and since I know they are on a list that shares development information, I ask them if they've heard anything about the commercial space that is being constructed on the site. 

We know there will be a wine and bourbon place. Like the one in the next door town (Oregon). 

Well now... Not quite the coffee shop that would have been my first choice, but maybe this has possibilities! An evening walk, a glass of wine at an outdoor table, a chat with your neighbors... I could be talked into that! 

And in the afternoon Snowdrop is here. She insists on helping Ed develop a google profile image.

I'm next.

Satisfied, she comes back to her books. But she is tempted by something else -- I told her I'd been swinging on the monkey bars in the neighborhood playground.

I want to go! 

And she is competitive! With her almost 70 year old grandmother. If I hung for 10 seconds, she wants to beat me. By a lot. (And, not surprisingly, she does.) She challenges me to several other climbs and swings but I tell her that I only compete against myself. This is hard for an 8 year old to understand, but I've said it before  -- you are your own challenge. "Do better" does not mean do better than others. And still she asks me -- you sure you don't want to climb up the climbing board or swing on the wheel?

I do not.

In the evening I make salmon cakes. There is absolutely nothing else worth making out of ground salmon and I do have batches of ground salmon in the freezer. There isn't much you can ruin in this. Add breadcrumbs, add onion, add and egg if you want. Yawn. With steamed asparagus. Double yawn. But so yummy nonetheless!

going around in circles

Circles... Figuring out the ratio of the circumference to the diameter... In other words, Pi, or our modern holiday for this day -- 3/14, which only makes sense in America, as only here do we list the month before the day. (March 14th in Europe is 14/3.) I've been getting emails from one of our favorite bakeries how they'll be out of pies quickly today because, you know, it's Pi Day! 

Me, I'm not thinking about Pi or pies, I'm thinking about the fact that I really delayed this year in ordering seeds for planting. Somehow I had in my head that we plant tomatoes on April 1st. And that we still had plenty of leftover seeds from previous years. None of this is true. I checked on Ocean and found out to my horror that we actually planted on the second day of spring, meaning on March 21st. Then I remembered that we ran out of tomato seeds last year. And that I dumped all my annuals into the meadows, leaving none to plant this spring. And that we are about to expand our meadow to surround the new peach orchard. Gulp. I'm in need of not pie, but seeds.

I've worked with many seed companies in the past and still I do not have a favorite one. Browsing today, I settled on Johnny's Selected Seeds. I put all my eggs into this basket (sort of like putting all your money in one unknown bank...) and ordered seeds. Annuals. Nasturtium, cosmos, sweet williams, sunflowers. Meadow mixes. Tomatoes, of course. Cherry, early ones, disease resistant, San Marzano, Brnadywine. Organic where possible. Watermelon. Peas. I will plant it all!

But wait, if the seeds come soon (rush shipping required) and we want to plant them, say, on the first day of spring, where will we get the dirt, given that our compost pile is frozen and buried under snow? No problem! -- says Ed. I click the "place order" button. If all goes well, we will have our hands full (of seeds) this weekend!

It's a sunny but cold day. Signs of spring? All the cats are outside All the birds are avoiding all the cats outside.

My morning routines are usually straightforward: collect missed eggs, feed chickens, check on water, feed cats -- some in the sheep shed, some at home. But now we have the addition of Pancake. She (I'm guessing here -- we really have no idea what the gender is) came at night. Ed fed her. She came again to the porch this morning. I fed her. The cats stare at her, but they let her come and go without confrontation. Why this tolerance for an outsider? I'm again guessing here, but I honestly think she is pregnant. She eats voraciously, all the time, and she is growing sizable in her underbelly. Ed wants us to catch her and take her in to be spayed (if she is not pregnant) but I think we need to hang back until it warms up. For now, we keep giving her food, distracting the other cats while she eats.

Breakfast, for us.

In the early afternoon, Ed attempts to walk with me. I mean, it's gorgeous outside -- irresistible! It's slow going for him, but he makes the loop and seems only slightly disabled afterwards. 

(today's quick look at cranes...)

And since it is Tuesday, Snowdrop has ballet after school, so we go through that routine.

(Here she is, notably without a hoodie tied around her waist!)

(And here she is, right after she heard a report that her parents had a good parent/teacher conference; she brushed over the academic praise though and asked anxiously -- yes, but did my teacher say that I was kind?)

All this brings us quickly to evening time. Ed and I are awash with eggs and so supper is easy -- eggs, some Brussel sprouts and a salad. Ed claims I overcooked the sprouts. He is correct, even though I think someone who cooks none of the meals should not mind uncrisp veggies. 

Yes, it's our light hearted Pi Day, and yes, I like even made up holidays, but there will be no pie for supper. In the end, garden planning trumped pie baking. And perhaps that's a good thing: Ed's as fussy about pies as he is about the tenderness of veggies.

(Deer, getting ready to eat anything that I plant...)