Well, it's been a while.  Spring has arrived, kind of.  The juncos are gone, my way of telling if it's spring, but the forsythia is not yet out all the way.  Spring is about 2-4 weeks late.  We went to the Cape for Laura's 50th birthday, and we were surprised by snow.  Yes, it snowed, enough for me to make a snowball to ham it up for a photo.  Even with less than ideal weather, Wellfleet is beautiful.  We visited every ocean beach, lots of damage and erosion to the dunes from the bad winter.

The highlight for Laura was our stop at Catherine's chocolates in Great Barrington for Easter candies.  The smell alone is worth the trip. 

Other thoughts:  (my mind is spinning)  Shredded wheat.  Sabra and I were reminiscing about shredded what, we didn't even think they sold it anymore.  But then there it was - and I happily threw it into the grocery cart.  Yesterday I opened it for breakfast -  individually wrapped two large pieces of wheat.  Two were just right - filling the bowl, I poured milk over the two cakes, and watched it quickly disappear.  More milk, and then a taste - not quite the way I remembered it, more like the animal food they used to sell you at the Catskill Game Farm.  Tivoli Recreation would make a trip there every summer and I would be a chaperon.  There was always one kid that would taste the animal food, sometimes eating the whole thing.  Anyway, that's what came to mind when I took my first taste.  Adding more milk, (maybe it's the milk that used to taste better), I finished the two cakes, realizing how full I felt.  You could go a whole day on shredded wheat.  Then I began to sing a song from Girl Scouts, a song I had not thought of for sixty years at least.  "Grandma chews them in her sleep, she thinks she's chewing shredded wheat" - a song about Grandpa's whiskers.  Today I took Sabra a packet of shredded wheat - let's hear what she thinks of it.  

All winter we have had one lone turkey come to the bird feeders everyday.  I called him Hopalong, because he had a hurt foot, missing toe, and he hopped .  It was amazing to me that he survived not only a frigid winter, but lots of snow, and all by himself.  Was he a loner by choice or did the rest of the turkeys avoid him because of his hop?  At our Cabin Fever party, my neighbors saw Hopalong in the front yard and remarked "there's George - Lonesome George", their name for the bird.  Anyway, last Friday when I came home from School, Hopalong had a visitor, a big tom turkey that kept strutting around him, looking at his reflection in my living room window, and even attacking the porch window.  He must have thought it was another amorous male turkey.

So it turns out that maybe Hopalong, or George is really Georgie Girl.  Today another tom turkey, not quite mature was following her around.  It takes four weeks for the eggs to develop so if George or Georgie Girl starts bringing a family to the feeder, that mystery will be solved.

Another sign of Spring, the Carolina wren is building a nest in our grill again.  She did this two years ago, and is back in the same spot.  She goes into the grill through the hole in the bottom where there used to be a grease can to catch the falling grease.  The grill hasn't worked for years, so it's no problem.  We just don't know how to get rid of a big broken grill, so it stands guard near the propane tank in the back yard.

I've gotten past the "no burning" ordinance in our village.  I picked up lots of broken branches and sticks - all signs of a bad winter and the cicada invasion of last summer.  Anyway, I make a big pile of burning material, start my little Weber grill up, and burn in pieces all the yard refuge. " Just  having a little camp fire, no sir, I am not burning brush, " I imagine my response to the fire truck in the front of the house.  Spring and burning wood is in the air.

And today, I hung up clothes outside for the first time.  The big pile of snow under the clothes line has finally melted.  It felt wonderful to hang those clothes, and to smell them as I took then down, completely dried in the wind today.  Spring - good to finally have you.