I've always dreamt of working on a farm, so at the ripe old age of 60-plus, dreams still come true. It's not exactly farm work, they have real farmers at Hancock Shaker Village, but I do spend a fair amount of time in the barn. It's baby animal season there, so there are a lot of children coming to see the calves and lambs and piglets and chicks. In fact, the piglets above are two days old, and I saw the last one a minute or so after it was born, even before the farmer. The other day, I told Mary I spent the day picking up chicks. It's supposed to be about the Shakers and their history, but for now it's mostly about cute animals. One thing is for sure, my nap time has dwindled, even though I spend only two days over there.
It is also supposed to be spring up here. Yesterday it snowed most of the afternoon, and today a little more. It even was sticking for a while yesterday. I think the snow tires will stay on a little bit longer. I had been hoping to put in a photo of our 3 brave crocuses, but they met a cruel fate. This is just not the climate for daffodils and tulips that are fooled into sticking their first stems out of the ground, only to get beaten back down, never to recover. The dandelions have a much better go of it, unfortunately.
But it is baseball season, and we are pleasantly surprised by the Mets, who seemed to have quietly put things together. We also see photos on Facebook almost every day from Jeff and Melodie at Nationals' games. Must be nice to live a couple of blocks from the stadium.
We did our annual burn this week of brush that we had accumulated over the past year. This time, though, we recruited some help, in the form of the three Ghanaian boys who Mary is tutoring at school. Not surprisingly, we were done in two hours, just before the serious rain started to fall. It was kind of fun to see the young boys (sixth and ninth graders) use a hand saw. They tried to make it work like a machete, and broke them both. That's why it was only kind of fun.
Big news this week was a birthday, Peter's 65th. Hard to believe. The photo collage on Facebook that Johanna put together were of happy times. Aunt Georgia also had a birthday, her 94th!
Mary had the week off, and she headed for Rhode Island to see Marj and Lew, and Mary Fort and Maura. She saw Patrick who has moved back from Colorado, and reports all is well with everyone there. John and Marilyn went down as well for the day, as they had to leave their house for the estate sale they were having. They have been busy getting everything ready for the sale, including unloading quite a bit of furnishings, of which we were the happy recipients of a few, including new kayak holders - my third try. Unfortunately, their buyer backed out at the last minute, so they're back to square one. Still they're heading back down to Florida next week.
We spoke with Joe who's training for the Berkshire Marathon, that will take place on Memorial Day. Margaret and Andrew went up to New York last week to see Annie and a few friends. Both Annie and Margaret are still in crunch mode with end of semester requirements.
When he's not consulting on thorny insurance issues, David is keeping up to date on college lacrosse, which seems to be taking place in snowstorms this spring. Andrew and Lur went out to Hope to see Claire last weekend in a concert.
Finally, as if I didn't have enough to do already, I am taking a course on Shakespeare's history plays through the lifelong learning institute - very stimulating, and with no papers, very enjoyable. Mary has been heading up a free swim lesson program for the month of April that her team is putting on. And guess who one of the start students is? Me. Although, I did overhear my personal coach tell someone that I had a poor kick. He's almost right. Actually, it's terrible.
With that, we close wishing everyone a healthy and joyous week, or two.
Love from up here.
