Birdseed Soup

That's what it looks like we're making on the patio with the snow melt and seed flung by a winter's worth of birds. Kind of gross. No sunshine today but it's still in the high 30s or low 40s so the melt is racing down the gutter and puddling any place low. The ground's still frozen so very little is seeping into the ground but the heat from the trees is pushing the snow back making circles around every trunk and there's a row of snow boulders poking up along the curb looking a bit like my own personal Stonehenge. I'm on my way out back to cut down last year's raspberry canes so this year's ones grow up big and strong and make lots of raspberries for Durwood. I told him that I was going to cut this year's down after the first frost instead of waiting when it's goopy with melting snow on the slope where I have to stand. Jeans, boots, a mist-repellent jacket, and leather gloves are the dress code of the day, I think.

You know how people always say "it's a small world" when you meet someone who knows someone you know? Well, DS & DIL1 started house hunting yesterday cramming in a lot of houses so they'd have a better idea of what they like and don't like. DS came and had lunch with me at the dive shop before he had to work to tell me about what they saw. The first house they saw was Krehbiel's old house on Reed St. (this is for DD, since the rest of you don't know the Krehbiels[old neighbors]), the next house was Pete & Laurie's old house over by O'Connell's old house (dive people) and that one, Pete & Laurie's, they revisited today, went over it with a fine-toothed comb, and made an offer on it. !!!!!!! Of course it's Thursday and the house is in foreclosure, which means they're dealing with a bank and have to wait until early next week for a response, so they'll spend the weekend on pins and needles, but isn't that exciting? Since DS is a vet, they're financing it through the VA. Their realtor told them that the VA inspectors are super-picky about condition but they're good with that since, as DS said, he wants the inspector to act "as if his/her daughter is moving in." I offered to help paint, etc. since I'm better with manual labor than decorating stuff.

Oh, yeah, writing...

February 16--Bill Blass, Suit, late 1960s. Ellen sat on the sofa in the den, her granddaughter Cara by her side. "Oh, Grandma," Cara said, "let's look at pictures," so Ellen reached an album down from the shelf next to the fireplace. She sat back down and Cara scooched closer to her side. The ten-year-old pulled the album onto her lap and smoothed her hands over the cover. "This time," she said with a serious look on her face, "you have to tell me something about all the people, every one." Ellen nodded. "A story about every picture, I can do that." Of all her grandchildren Cara was the one most willing to listen to her memories, the one who insisted on it. They looked at the photographs and Ellen tried to remember something funny about each one. How that dog, Roger, had loved to catch bees with a clap of his jaws. That Uncle Walt had driven that Model A ford up Pike's Peak after World War II. Near the middle of the album they came to a photo of a handsome, dark-haired young man in a suit like no other. Ellen's breath caught in her chest at the smooth skin and confident grin on his face. "Look at that suit, Grandma," Cara said, "doesn't he look silly?" Ellen swallowed the lump in her throat. "I thought he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen," she said. She was swept back to a day in the late 1960s when her Ray came home from college with her oldest brother Oscar, and captured her heart.

Memories, light the corners of my mind... Sorry if I just gave you an ear worm.
--Barbara