Every so often, I look at my daughter and her cousin, and realize that for them, these will be the good old days. It actually does help me to know that there will be a time when they will be older, looking back fondly on these times.
They will laugh about the roving cells of terrorist chickens, the groundhogs, and the way we always ooh and aah over the baby horses up the road. Maybe they'll laugh about all the times Molly fell in the pond, or the time she drove into the row of blue spruces. Certainly some of Rob's fireworks displays will qualify.
They already make fun of my sister and me, calling us "the mothers" and laughing about the way we do things. They'll remember the days of us scrambling to get out soap orders and issues of the magazine. The very idea of anyone wanting us to speak for their groups is completely hysterical to them, so that will be part of it too. They will also look back on this time with their uncle John very fondly, I suppose. At least I think so. It started with the repeated bouts of encephalopathy - oh how the kids enjoy that! Last time he was hospitalized for that (confusion and hallucinations), the kids would have stayed the whole time if we'd let them!
So as I worry about how this affects the kids, it helps me to know that someday they will consider these times to be the good old days.
We are in the tail end (we hope!) of waiting for a liver for our brother. He spent a couple of days in the hospital and came home last night. It gave us the impetus to get ourselves in gear and find coverage for all of the events that are coming up in the next 6 weeks. In this business, the next 2 months are what it's all about! The doctor drew us a picture yesterday and showed us what might be up and coming for John.
A little outpatient procedure that might really help for the time being, it is called a TIPS procedure - Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt - where they go in through the jugular and down into the liver to install a shunt to relieve pressure. This would result in less fluid build-up in his stomach.
I am sharing this with you because sometimes I am not around. Some of you will worry about me, and so I want you to know what's going on. As long as we approach this together as a family, we are all ok. We should all always remember that these are the good old days.
Now on a lighter note, spring is breathing down our necks, here.
On the way out to the hospital the other day I noticed that the anise hyssop was sending up beautiful purple leaves, and that the luscious chickweed growing next to it is blooming. I want to get outside and pull up some of the deeply rooted (!!!) white bladderwort. Maybe I can do a little before the sun goes down.
Note her fabulously sensible shoes! Her thrift store shopping is very handy for creek stompin' too, as it turns out. 
I've never identified the above wildflower. The flowers resemble Spring Beauty and when they are blooming at the same time one needs to look closely to see a difference. These are a couple of inches taller, I think. the Spring Beauty isn't showing yet. No Trout Lily leaves yet either.
I *think* this is a skunk cabbage. The leaves are very large when mature, about a foot high and resembling loose Romaine lettuce more than cabbage. However, I didn't see what was happening inside the rotting dark purple leaf at the top of the picture until I got it home and looked at it! Isn't that amazing!
Ramps! Our ramps all survived! We planted them several different places and I found them in all of the spots. They are robust and strong. What a delight to find them! The trilliums that will accompany them aren't up yet.
I loved the looks of this stick laying on the woodland floor. We decided it was a mushroom wand.
Galls of some sort, I imagine. Might be fungus. Molly pushed on one of the puffy ones and said that a puff emerged - so it could be a puffball type of fungus.
I would have missed this had I been alone. Molly found this and it was the only one we found of the thousands that will be out in a few short days. Bloodroot.
Several patches of the Dutchman's Breeches are starting to poke their heads up, and uncurling their dusky leaves. The leaves seem to green up quickly in the light.
We watched the goldfish congregating near the surface of the lake as we walked out of the woods. I cannot express how relaxing and centering that little walk was - how those few minutes seem to have changed everything. And if there was any doubt, Spring is indeed going to be arriving soon.
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There are a lot of other things going on around here. The fun part of the year is closing in.
I did manage to pull the stray turnips from last year and drag in the bamboo tipis and structures that dotted my garden (Bob grows bamboo, so I go a little crazy with it) just in case the tractor and plow wander up this way.
That is a phrase that struck my funny bone, and unfortunately for those around me, I've been busy finding ways to use it in various sentences. Buck rub is the bane of the tree farmer's existance, so it strikes me as even odder to only be hearing about this now, 20 years or more after they moved onto a tree farm! Could it be that my family, recognizing that the combination of my jr. high sense of humor plus an affinity for words would find the term too glorious not to bandy about? Ah well... Aye yam what aye yam.
They have a healthy amount of salt added to the mixture before being poured into the mold. I personally don't like using them in the winter, but during the other three seasons they remind me of the shower you take after spending the day in the ocean - clean, fresh, and soft. The bluish green one is Ocean Rain and the reddish orange one is Yuzu. They average a little over 7 ounces each! They're 
Marge Reppert hands out 
I was fond of the tree trunk carving. Love stuff like this! 
