Snow Come, Snow Go

See?  Frowning at yesterday morning's snow worked.  (I didn't frown all day, Aunt B, so no [more] wrinkles. Love you, too.)  It went away.  Actually it was warm enough and drizzly enough that it went away with no help from me.  Today I plan to go out and sweep and shovel all the winter's detritus (that's a polite way to say rabbit poop) off the patio.  I'm tired of looking at it and it's warm enough to drag the Weber away from the house, fire it up, and grill us a little NY Strip steak for supper tonight.  Yay!  I'll be off later to score a few mushrooms to have on the side.  I won't move the reclaimed (a polite way to say stolen, but is it really stealing if you junk pick them from the curb?) Christmas trees off the bones of the honeysuckle because there's no other cover for the birdies yet.  I also want to get out the secateurs and cut down the dead things that I left out front so that the winter birds had the seed heads to munch on.  I noticed that the mums against the house are poking up their little green leaves.  Yay!  Green things.  I'm happy to see them even though the $%#^& rabbits have munched off most of my crocuses, damn them.

2012's flowers

I shared with DIL1 my idea of planting tulip bulbs in a circle of daffodils to try and keep the rabbits from eating the tulips.  They don't eat the daffs so I think maybe they'll pass the tulips by.  Maybe.  It's worth a try and the circles of leaves look pretty.  Sometimes it works.  I bought almost 100 bulbs one October and it was too cold and I was too lazy to make a hole for each separate bulb so I planned 4 or 5 spots across the front of the house, dug a turkey-platter shaped hole to the depth for tulips (they like it deepest), put a few bulbs in the center (odd numbers, please), filled in soil until it was at the depth daffodils like, put them in a ring around where I guessed the tulips were (the leaves dodge around if you're not precise), then added more soil, planted grape hyacinths and other small things whose names I can't remember around the outside edge, then filled it to the top.  I put hyacinths inside a ring of daffodils too.  I like the mix of flowers and leaf shapes and colors.

(god, my hands are so dry.  yours too?  guess I wash 'em too much.  pause while I lotion up....)

I forgot to tell you how big a hit the little messenger bag I took to Big Sister was on Friday afternoon.  I showed her the pockets and how the strap goes over her head to ride across her chest so she can run and play without it slipping off.  At first it lay on the chair arm by her Grandma Eileen (!!! fun to see her unexpectedly) but by the time I left an hour later her best pal Teddy was riding in it while she twirled and hopped around the room.  Oh, the hats looked good on Baby Sister too.

April 7--Frederic Remington, The Cheyenne.

Like a single organism
 horse and rider move
across the Plains,
man and beast as one
in defense of ancestral land.
~~~~~

Makes me wish I could ride a horse like that but I'm too chicken to get way up there and boss around a horse with just two leather strings and force of will.  I could stand to ride a convertible though... maybe not today, it's only 40 degrees.  I'm off to do a bit of random cleaning.  Enjoy your Sunday.
--Barbara