A Whole Lotta Lunches

I know I'm feeling better because I have been accomplishing things since I got up.  A couple weeks ago Pick 'N Save offered a box of 30 Oscar Meyer weenies for $5 so I picked it up thinking it'd be good for Durwood to eat with his beloved baked beans as lunches.  (He tends to skip lunch so I'm always on the hunt for temptations to get him to eat.)  He called me yesterday extolling the virtues of Eggo waffles (which was last week's breakfast temptation) and wondering what to have for lunch.  I suggested a hot dog in beans and he said he wasn't such a big fan of hot dogs.  I reminded him that he'd laid waste to a box of 30 a month ago and he said he'd eaten them only to be polite.  Seldom outmaneuvered, I offered to grill some hot dogs so he'd have some in reserve, didn't he like grilled hot dogs?  He loves grilled hot dogs (see? carrot and stick) so this morning I fired up the Weber (while filling birdfeeders with the grill upwind of the birdseed storage cans so now I smell like I spent the morning around a campfire), then tossed about half of the hot dogs on the fire for a few minutes.  Voila!  Instant lunches.  And there are 15 more in the freezer ready for the same treatment when this supply runs low.

Also while the charcoals were getting ready I dragged the birdie tree to the curb and took some pictures of new leaves, sprouts, and buds around the yard.

See the forsythia?  It's going great guns this year...




here's some iris spearing into Spring...





these tiny pink buds will grow up to make leaves, blossoms, and blueberries...




and the honeysuckle's making its leaves so the hummingbirds come back eventually.  (Gotta get up the nectar feeders so we can clean them because next weekend's when they go out.  I'll check the migration map to make sure.)

I didn't get much knitting done yesterday but I did have a pair of the coolest young men stop in the afternoon.  One of them's working as a diver for a treasure salvor in the waters off Jacksonville, FL for a year before going to school to learn to drive cruise ships and the other one's in flight school almost to his Instructor certification with a goal of flying charters in the Bahamas.  Who says young people don't have goals and the drive to achieve them?  Plus they were nice kids, funny and friendly too.  I wish I could tell their parents that, well, I can because one set of parents are divers.  But my faith in the "younger generation" got a booster shot yesterday.

April 21--Paul Cezanne, Still Life: Flowers in a Vase.

She picked peonies, roses,
lilacs, that one lily
tucked in a sunny corner
blooming ahead of the rest.
Pulled out the old blue vase
left by the previous tenants.
On the yellow table
she made grace, symmetry,
art.
~~~~~

I'm off to find myself a spring coat this morning and then meet a friend for lunch. (thank god, I feel better)  But first I need to wash off the smell of campfire.  
--Barbara