Four Part Harmony

We had a lot of excitement this past weekend, what with a full moon, spring equinox, and Easter all happening in the span of a short few days. We’re pretty excited about spring around here. Nicki’s been swapping out all the winter library books with spring books. I erased the winter snowman picture I drew on the winter solstice to mark the onset of winter, and updated it with this spring picture. I think maybe we’ll have to make it an ongoing marker of the seasons for us…though it does mean we don’t have our chalkboard for utilitarian things like phone messages and grocery lists.

Anna’s foot is healing, and as far as I can tell isn’t bugging her much anymore. She’s still not walking on it yet, but I think that might just be due to the fact that it’s kind of awkward. She’ll stand and put weight on it, but just would rather crawl to get around.

She’s had quite a few friends sign and draw pictures on it.

We dyed easter eggs on Saturday of course. We had such success last year with the natural dyes that we did it again this year. Nicki did most of the work cooking up the dyes, while Anna and I went on a bike ride. (The weather’s getting nice, and we’ve been breaking out the bike and trailer on sunny days to get back in the groove of riding in it after a winter of not using it too often.) The dyes, from left to right in the photo, are: spinach (yellow/green), red cabbage (purple), onion skin (orange), and beets (red). As with last year, the onion skins make the best dye by far, and actually come out a deep red color. Additionally, we added a little bit of the orange onion skin dye to a couple of the purple and red jars, and those came out a deeper color than the ones without onion skin dye. I don’t know what it is about the onion skins, but they work some kind of magic when it comes to making dye.

Sunday morning, just like Nicki said it would, the “Spring Hare” had come and hidden the eggs and left an Easter basket and a couple presents for Anna. He had also nibbled at the carrot we left out for him and left a very nice thank you note. Anna did enjoy hunting for all the eggs, though she mostly wanted to get to opening the presents and checking out the goodies in the easter basket.

Anna’s Easter basket had little eggs filled with dried apricots, cherries, and raisins, and even some little molasses candies. These went largely ignored, but there was also a little paper bag with a little butterfly stamp on it, closed with a staple. This picture shows Anna just about the moment she discovered what was inside….popcorn. A whole big bag. And she didn’t move until the whole bag was gone. She was very happy.

In addition to the basket, there were two wrapped presents. One of which was this smock that Nicki sewed and hand embroidered for Anna. She’s been working on this for a while now (fitting it in amongst a million other projects), and it turned out amazing. I think I’ll have to post this again separately, so I can get it filed into the art project section properly. Anna spent a lot of time filling up the pocket with snacks and whatever else.

The other gift was this hand sewn little floppy felt house. This is another project that Nicki just finished, and the photo doesn’t do it much justice. It’s got a little roll-up door and curtain, a window, and a little felt flower on the other side. Anna has a little bunny that she got at the clinic when she got her cast, and it’s just the right size for this house. This one too will have to get posted to the “Art” section of the site.

After a nice leisurely morning, and a delicious breakfast, we rallied some energy and planted a bunch of summer seeds. We’ve got our seedling setup in the basement. We got 15 or so tomatoes started, eggplants, paprika peppers, tomatillos, and basil and then we ran out of soil. We’ll have to get the rest of them going in the next week or so. Anna was a big help, though had a tendency to empty a whole bag of seeds onto the ground to grab one.

And here’s a cute picture of Nicki, Anna, and Floydie, sitting in Anna’s new bed and watching the rain come down. Spring rain though.