You Don't See That Every Day

  Spring is here. The daffodils are the herald for me. When I see those blooms, I know it's spring and warmer weather is on its way. They also remind me of my dad. Each spring he would send out the notice that they were in bloom, and he would tell us to come and cut a bouquet. If I had gotten married in March instead of May, I would have carried a bouquet of daffodils. This past weekend we finished planting the last of the hazelnut trees. Except for the pollenizers. In our orchards we have two main varieties of hazelnut trees, Wepster and McDonald. We have nearly 5,000 of each variety. Interspersed among those two varieties are the pollenizers, of the York and Yamhill variety. These are extra pollenizers as insurance for the early pollen and the late pollen. Well, this past weekend we finished replanting the last of the Wepster and McDonalds. Our Montana relatives were visiting and took the time to help us out, which made the task much more fun. And to my daughter's delight, an...

Our summer time adventures have already begun, even though it is still technically spring. This is the one thing we don't procrastinate about! In May I took the two younger girls to a nearby park. Since everyone else was in school we had the place to ourselves. After a special treat of lunch from fast-food, we headed to the playground. We had to throw rocks in the river:  And there were new toys to play on:  And then the tunnel - it's always a hit  And then off to the slides and climbing structures.  Some of the favorite things about this park - they have the old time play toys still - a merry-go-round, and teeter-totters! The kids love to play on these. Our next adventure was this past week; we went to an Heirloom Rose Garden with my newly-retired sister. We spent quite a long time stopping and smelling the roses. There were so many varities and so many good smelling roses!  I could have spent longer there, but the girls were ready for l...

 Really? It's March? I couldn't tell it was the beginning of spring break! The snow startled us on Wed morning. But the boy still had school. The girls went out and played in the morning (until the broken shoulder episode) One came in to warm up. By Wed night the snow had been falling all day, and was starting to stick when we got home from church. The Boy went out to play before bedtime. Anything to wear him out! This morning we woke up to even more snow, and cancelled school. The dogs had great fun chasing the snowballs we threw for them, that somehow disappeared as the dog sniffed for it! Some of the kids went out to play in the snow while it was here. The sun came out mid-morning and started melting the snow. We watched a movie today - a nice change for a daytime - called The Mighty Macs. It was an interesting story about a Catholic college girls basketball team. And then the doorbell rang; and these arrived at our ho...