I just received a late birthday wish in the form of an e card... it starts out with an dog lying on a rug with unopened birthday gifts all around. One of the birthday gifts pops open and out jump two kittens... the kittens run around wreaking havoc with the dog's gifts and pop his balloons and then the dog runs behind a chair to hide and finally the kittens disappear. The dog goes back into his basket and lies down and you can tell he is starting to miss the hi jinks of the kittens... then he starts to dream of the kittens having fallen asleep in his basket and wakes up to find the two kittens fast asleep at his tail and he settles down and cuddles in with the kittens.... it made me almost cry... it was really sweet. I think cutesy things more and more as I get older make me maudlin which is strange because I thought as you get older you get crustier... shouldn't I be a crusty old bag by now?
I woke yesterday to rain and at times the rain turned to frozen rain and then snow.... but nothing that actually stayed on the ground. All I could think about was wanting to go out into the forest to look for Prairie Crocuses. I didn't go though because of the rain. This morning I woke to beautiful blue skies with nary a cloud to be seen. The rain of yesterday was nowhere to be seen but it is certainly not forgotten... the grass is turning a beautiful green. It won't be long now that the grass will be full of the purple of Violets and then when they fade there will be the yellow of Dandelions to follow. The Violets and Crocuses are the part that I love (not so much the Dandelions though I don't hate them as some do). The Violets are so tiny that they only are about 1 inch high you can barely notice them until you are walking through them.... the Crocuses grow in the forest only. I have to go looking for them ... and then occasionally I will find an Orchid or two.... and they are so beautiful and fragile... its hard to believe that nature can offer such beauties in such fragile packages and still they survive year after year. With all the Pine Beetle devastation it is hard to believe that the forest can sustain anything on the forest floor. I worry that our forest will soon have the tracks of tractors and heavy equipment as they take out the dead wood... I am not sure I want that but I understand the worry since all that standing deadwood is a fire hazard... still a few more years and all that wood will be on the ground rotting under a bed of vegetation... if we can just hold off with forest fires for a few more years there will be no point in worrying... most of it will be down on the ground giving nutrition to the flowers on the forest floor... offering new homes to the wee mice and voles and squirrels that scurry in the underbrush... yes it is still a fire hazard but not as much.
For days now, the birds have been coming back in droves. There is an army of Robins around the house... this concerns me as there seems to be more this year than there have been for many years. Teapot has just ordered thirty new strawberry plants which we intend on planting in large boxes above the ground. The last time we planted strawberry plants the Robins stole them as fast as they would ripen... we tried netting them and the voles got them... so this time we will plant them in those boxes that we used to use for the sheep to feed from. I will build a small platform for the boxes and they will hopefully work to keep the ground animals away. But we will still have to net them to keep that army of Robins away too. If it is not the deer then it is the Robins... pests... they are all pests.... but still I can't begrudge them too much not if I am to enjoy the forest. They are part of the forest too..
Well enough of this maudlin stuff... I am spinning again and seeing good progress on the yarn for the socks. Today I will ply some of it and find out how much yarn I will get from my packages of carded fibre. 100 metres? Fifty metres? I'm not sure how much I will get but hopefully I will get a good amount and be able to start knitting... that way I can give my fingers a little break from spinning every so often and I can knit a little too. And who knows... I might even get a chance for a wee walk to look for those Crocuses.
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