Introducing our new wheelbarrow!

We found this on Craigslist today and I could not be happier. I have big plans for this wheelbarrow. D is fixing the wheel with his toolbox. We bought the toolbox at an estate sale when we were first married. It came from an old house in Park Hill. We found it in a shed full of tools dating back 50 years. I would like to have met the man who owned those tools, because they were so lovingly collected and well-worn. Now I associate the old metal toolbox with D as he travels around and fixes things in our run-down house. Which is steadily getting less run-down! Especially now that we have a sturdy wheelbarrow. I notice in this picture that R really needs a haircut . . . she is trying to grow it long enough to "make pigtails."

And now for something completely different.

R and I have both been sick this week, so lunches have not been very photogenic. I read this morning about this owl who is afraid of heights. He fell from his nest as a baby and has been raised by a human handler. Now that they are ready to release him into the wild, they discovered that he won't fly any higher than five feet ten inches--which is exactly the height of his handler.

I wish them luck. Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time with a six year old and a puppy, but I love the look on his face: "No, I won't do it. Talk to me all you want, but I will not. It is too high."

Easter Egg Bento

Easter Sunday and Mary Poppins

Easter morning, Mass and new shoes and white gloves.

A rabbit was eating grass in the front yard.

He was not at all bothered by how close we were.

Then we came home, got out of our dress-up clothes, and shoveled compost in the backyard for a few hours. It is such a good feeling to move that big pile around with a pitchfork and get to the black gold on the bottom layer. A little over one year's worth of yard trimmings and kitchen scraps. D is a lot like my own Dad, always willing to stop work and talk to his daughter. And lift her up high, and be a safety net underneath her when she wants to swing from the locust tree.

She is waving at her neighbor friends: "Daddy's taking us to see Mary Poppins!" D got tickets to the Broadway touring company of Mary Poppins, on their last night in Denver. The 6:30 p.m. show.

R in the car on our way to see Mary Poppins.

I only had my cellphone to take pictures, but this is downtown Denver in front of the Convention Center's giant blue bear. I hope R remembers it for a long time. It was a wonderful show, and the whole experience of being downtown at night and sitting in the dark waiting for the curtain to come up reminded me how rarely I do anything like that any more. We're going to try to do it more often.

Seedling Update

I need the salad greens in the upstairs bedroom to move outside to make room for tomatoes, but it won't stop snowing.

Basil, marjoram, arugula, chervil, summer savory. These were all planted around Valentine's Day.

Mesclun greens.

Chives, sweet peas, more arugula, and on the left, the flower R chose from the seed packet. Pink Fairy Candytuft. Isn't that what you would choose, if you were a six year old girl?

More sweet peas, reaching for the light.

The north wall has more salad greens and herbs, and way in the back, pink Evening Primrose (again, chosen by R from the rotating racks of seed packets at the nursery.) I love the lottery feeling of letting her do that. She actually picked flowers that might do very well in our garden.

We got well over a foot of heavy, wet snow on Wednesday--enough for a snow day from school. It's already melting away from the crocuses, but there is more snow coming tonight.

The snow was so wet and heavy that it damaged a lot of trees. Three big branches from the gnarled juniper that shades our back deck came crashing down. I don't know now if we should just cut it down. There would be no shade at all on the back porch.

Right before the snow came, I put up more pea trellises and planted about half the peas. I held half back to plant later. We'll see which ones do better. I sprouted them first on a paper towel, so I think they will just wait under the snow blanket and pop up when it melts. The snow was so heavy on the netting that it wrecked the trellises and I'll have to re-do them.

I did experiment with a GrowBag planted with salad greens almost 3 weeks ago, that I keep outside. The snow is melting off of it. The seedlings aren't dying, but they're not really growing either. This is only the second year we've had a garden here, so it's all a grand experiment.

I planted these tomatoes in peat pots today. I hope by the time they germinate, there will be room under the lights for them. I actually started a handful of tomatoes three weeks ago. Those are the ones I might try to set out earlier than last frost, inside a Wall-O-Water.

Daddy, Jesus & Santa

Yesterday D was off work, because he has to work all day Saturday. We went to the kids' Mass together, and then we sprung R from school. We took her out to lunch and played hooky at the movies for the afternoon. We saw the new Disney movie, "The Princess and the Frog." R had a lot of questions on the way home about falling in love, and what it means to be in love. She decided that she is in love with "three people: Daddy, Jesus and Santa."

Asparagus Lasagna

For dinner with D's family on Friday, I made asparagus lasagna with homemade noodles, in individual ramekins. I wish I had taken a picture of R making the noodles with me. She loves to crank the handle on the pasta roller.

Salad; broccoli rabe, black pepper & parmesan crostini; and soup made from the tomatoes from our garden that I canned this summer. It's topped with Greek yogurt, a sprinkle of smoked paprika, microgreens from the windowsill, and cheese toasts. Then there is the Extra-Fancy screw-top sparkling juice. I am the only champagne drinker, or I would have splurged.

And baked lemon custard for dessert, with raspberries and a geranium blossom. This custard bakes creamy on the bottom, but cakelike on the top. I couldn't figure it out until D pointed out that it bakes with a water bath that goes 3/4 of the way up the ramekins, and the cake texture starts where the water bath leaves off.

This picture is small because it's a screen grab from the video camera. The girls went into the kitchen after dinner with their juice boxes and told knock-knock jokes to each other. Here's an example of one of R's knock-knock jokes: "Knock knock. Who's there. Water bottle. Water bottle who? Charlie! Bad dog! Spray you with the water bottle!" (water squirting noises.) Oh dear. Poor Charlie, but it does work to stop him from barking at the fence and digging in the garden.