As Requested

Happy First Day of Spring

One end of the bowling green

I used to wish we could flood the bowling green in winter so the kids could skate. They loved to do so and spent hours down in town on the public rink. It seemed such a shame to have this perfect depression in the ground, just begging to be filled with water and frozen, where they could have had a serious amount of fun.

Part of the other end

However, we pay for our water out here and it isn't cheap. So it never happened.

Fast forward to the ridiculous winter of excess, 2013, 2014. Kids are grown and all gone but Beck and she is way past too busy to skate.

Now the silly thing is full of lovely ice just begging for speeding blades.

Oh, well.

Harbinging his little heart out.

And why a bowling green you might ask? The boss's dad built it as a young man, using horse and scoop blade, for former owners of the place. It is really a nice sort of place, despite the complete and utter absence of bowlers.




And last night the kids brought the therapy baby down and let me hold her, sleeping sweetly, on my lap for several hours. She is a cuddler, content to snuggle in whatever arms are warm and handy. Thanks guys.

Visiting her great grand aunt from who she takes her second name

 Have a wonderful first day of spring! 

Orion Wore a Kilt of Clouds

She looks a lot like daddy
and a little bit like Great grandma Peggy,
which is pretty fitting I'm thinking

As seen from midnight stairs the umpteenth time....

Kind of fluffy for a guy like him, but  he looked good in it, step dancing out there, on the heifer barn roof.

When I came down again at dawn, droves of robins queued up to take a turn bathing in the big rut in the driveway.

Festooned with frosting, the trees were trailing veils of gauzy mist...the whole river was shrouded in it, the geese like mysterious strangers hiding from the unfurling sun.

I thought to take pictures of it all to save to show her what her first day looked like, someday when she is old enough to see them.

But I didn't, because I was too darned scared.

We were all scared and it was a long and worried day.......but worth every fearful second.

At the end the young family was increased by one, and the new parents knew a bond like no other.

And the new grandparents shed a couple of buckets of tears of pure, deep, elemental joy, that can only be engendered by the birth of one so loved.

Welcome to the world, Miss Peggy Ann Marie Schultz. We love you baby girl.