Glorious Fecundity

It's melting!! It's melting!! I can once again see the patio furniture that I didn't get under cover in time, and the brown, dead-looking trumpet vine that is soon to be replaced with a clematis as soon as I can dig it out, and the rest of my decaying pumpkins that I used as place holders for the chicken wire that I didn't need after all to keep the squirrels away from my tulip bulbs. We've exchanged the snows of Colorado for the swamps of Florida and I couldn't be happier.

So what that Teddy can't be bothered to wipe his feet when he returns from his adventures! Who cares that a skunk apparently courted his beloved under our bedroom window last night and managed to stink up the entire house! I'm delighted that I'll have to scrub the snot off the siding where poor old Arnold cleared out his sinuses all winter. I didn't need the recently arrived flock of robins to deliver the news. Spring is coming!

The World's Ugliest Cat

The cats are moving off the porch today from whence we took pity on them during the snowstorms. I'm tired of my porch looking like the Joads live here, but mostly, with the exception of Miss Kitty, the cats are smelly and pungently territorial. And more than that -- Dave found a possum living under the straw!!

He had a great gig going -- nice cozy den with room service, but ICK!!! I know possums are earthly creatures and probably have some purpose in the scheme of the world, but . . . ICK!!

Dave happened to notice Mr. Possum last night when he was out investigating something that fell to the earth burning -- yeah, yeah, but that's another story -- and thank god, he did because I nearly picked the straw up the other day to carry it out to the shed. That's all I need -- a painful series of rabies shots because I accidentally picked up a possum. Not to mention all the rehabilitation after my heart attack.

How wonderful to have married a hero. I tell him he should wear a cape. Not only does he open the door to noisy closets at 5 in the morning, but now he has vanquished the possum from the porch.

The Whole Winter's Been a Lion

It's been quite awhile since I've logged on, but the only topics that came to my mind were weather-related, and if you live in the Midwest -- or the East coast -- you're sick of hearing, worrying and talking about the weather right now -- bitching about the snow and longing for spring.

So let's talk quilts! It's time for a Pickle Dish update. As of today, I have thirty pickle dish arcs done for my traditional Pickle Dish quilt, and the entire 24 completed for the Christmas Pickle project. I am in love with the foundation piecing of Pickle Dish arcs. I get in the zone and Pickle Dishes fly out of my sewing machine.

What brings me to earth is the sobering prospect of connecting curved piece to curved piece. But I am resolute! And I will tackle that portion of the challenge this week and let you know who it goes.

Happy March 1st!

Winter is going, going . . .

There's been a spring sighting in our neighborhood!!!

It's not a robin, but an advertised estate auction. It's not scheduled to take place until April, but at this stage of winter, I'll take anything I can get.

Springing Ahead

I just read an article in the Des Moines Register cautioning gardeners not to get too carried away ordering spring plants just because the winter has been so harsh.

Too late.

I order plants like I buy fabric. Well, maybe not as impetuously as that. I do check the zone requirements and draw the line at fussy roses. But who can resist a strawberry and cream hydrangea or apple blossom tulips? And, for some reason, I am a sucker for any kind of sedum -- I think it's the sheer joy of the bees who tumble through the flowers.

One of the spring chores that has risen to the top of the list is clearing out trees, especially after this last go-round of ice. We lost a lot of limbs, thankfully none of which fell on the house or power lines. I hate it that the silver maples, which are brittle, are crashing down, but I'm ready to clear out the black walnuts, which are sucking the joy out of the front yard. It's clear that they are just junk trees that grew from the happenstance of a well-placed nut. No one planned them; they just are. And they just are a nuisance.

Dave's dad refused to cut down any tree, even if it was growing in the foundation of the house, and Ann Arborites, by the sheer nature of their environment, are extremely pro-tree. I'm certainly not anti-tree, but I'm over the mentality that you can't cut one down. It's sort of like deer -- I certainly don't want to shoot one myself, but I do understand that culling the herd is better for the overall health of the species.

And then they won't have to eat my hostas . . . and my dahlias . . . and my asters . . .

Cabin Feverish

Teddy is not the only one with cabin fever around here. It's not that I have anywhere I need to go or that I don't have plenty to do around here. It's just the idea of being trapped until the snow plow comes through that makes my brain go strange places.

One morning Dave and I sat around and tried to name all the NFL teams . . . and then their coaches . . . and then the quarterbacks. For someone who used to read at ballgames, I only missed two quarterbacks and one coach.

Then yesterday I got it into my head to see if I could name all of Iowa's 99 counties. I made it to 62 with a couple of "maybes". It's kind of amazing how names pop into your head at random moments. Dave and I were both upstairs yesterday -- he was working in his office and I was in my sewing room working on Pickle Dish arcs -- and I kept hollering out names for him to write down so that I could add them to the list later.

It's kind of scary to think of what's stored in your head and what you can retrieve -- and what you can't. One of my many talents is being able to name character actors from the 60s and 70s. Watch a rerun of Mission: Impossible with me and nine times out of ten I can tell you the real name of the villain and the heroine and tell you which Star Trek episode they were in.

Why can I do that? And why can't I just remember why I walked into the kitchen?

Oh, and by the way, there really is an Ida county in Iowa.

Winter Wonderland

I'm getting prepared for the next power outage. Buckets of water are on stand-by, as are the flashlights and candles. I ran the dishwasher; Dave is catching up on his laundry. And I made a salad because I got bloody sick of peanut butter the last time. Teddy has an extra box or two to play in since he can't go outside.

I'm trying to stay positive -- because it's been so frigid, maybe the ice still clinging to the power lines is brittle and will just fall off when the wind hits it -- but there's no point in playing ostrich either.

And, yet, it's still beautiful. I am so often reminded of the Emily Dickinson poem "There's a Certain Slant of Light" -- usually in the fall, but more and more this winter. About 3 p.m. the air gets a richness about it as if the cold has been absorbing sunlight all day and begins to reflect it back. The fences glimmer with ice, and unspoiled, unbroken expanses of white cover everything, like that white fleecy stuff you can buy at Christmastime to put under the creche.

I may have to finish my book by flashlight tonight and wear three pairs of socks to bed. It's a dead cert that I'll have to re-shovel the Western Passage, but for now -- an Iowa girl come home -- it's all good.