Spring

No deer has been sighted since before the last post. The tree peony is pushing up three (four) sprouts from the roots, and crocus has given way to daffodil. On Friday it was 83 F. in Concord, which is too hot.

On Friday night, I heard one peeper and one woodfrog. On Saturday morning, there was an egg-mass in the pond-puddle, so I think it likely that there were two woodfrogs. I am pleased as punch. There is a distant hammer of sapsucker on something metal, and I am very grateful it's not the otherwise without-function TV aerial. Redwing blackbirds appear at the ravaged birdfeeder area (raccoons, who have not been spotted around since I quit filling the largest birdfeeder. Which is one story up, or we would be complaining about bears).

Actual birdsong. Sunburn. It's very pleasant. Much of the ground still looks like it has been belt-sanded, but grass is beginning to grow in.

On the minus side, one of our nicer chickens, Joyce, a duckwing, has not been seen for several days. The last time I saw her she was wandering around _alone_, not something she had done often -- I don't know if she and Faith, the rooster, had a falling out or what, although he has been paying a lot of attention to Buffy. And then when I went to let them out of the coop, I found Auk, a rather (what is chicken for 'androgynous'?) gender-unidentified black Cochin rooster, dead on the floor. The Cochin Bantam, Dawn, who was always with him, was sitting next to his body. But she came out and followed the rest of the flock later -- now reduced to Buffy, Ms. Callendar, Dawn, and Faith (the alpha rooster). Doug said Auk had been a bit listless lately, but it would not have been easy to tell.

On Saturday I went to a class on weird knitting things with Lucy Neatby, who has a rep as an interesting teacher. She well deserves it, and she's funny, and I thoroughly enjoyed the day. We did some strange things learning how to make a knitted-on edge, how to do entrelac in garter stitch (or start to learn how,) sweet little equilateral triangles, and some relatively free-form knitting. It was truly appalling to feel my intellect plummet as the day went on; the women who were taking all three days of her have my respect.


Then I came home and did quilting-related activities with Sarah, whose blue and brown quilt will be lovely (in a blue and brown way, but the darkness of the brown actually makes it look less like a cloudy winter day than I was worried about) if the blood she is sweating on it doesn't stain too much. Curves are a bhitch, even when you are as good at measuring. So, to relax, she made me a pincushion out of some Japanese charm squares. It looks pre-war (WWII, all right?). It's lovely.



To my delight, I apparently took the lessons I learned making an attic window quilt in about 1995, because I haven't had to redo any of the blocks I made so far (or scream, stick a seam ripper in my eye, cry, you know). It may be a testament to successful aging or good medication. Either way, it is GREAT. I was not among the least comprehending of the knitting students, either, which made a change). This quilt will be much smaller than that one, thank God, and it's a gift so no pictures until it's done and given, which we shall have to hope happens before the Apocalypse. It might.