Early Sunday

A forewarning that Thursday is May Day. If you haven't heard of this holiday, here is the scoop:

Handing out May Day baskets is a charming and gentle activity for children and adults. It's a tradition that Louisa May Alcott wrote of in "Jack and Jill" (Chapter 18):

"The job now in hand was May baskets, for it was the custom of the children to hang them on the doors of their friends the night before May-day; and the girls had agreed to supply baskets if the boys would hunt for flowers, much the harder task of the two. Jill had more leisure as well as taste and skill than the other girls, so she amused herself with making a goodly store of pretty baskets of all shapes, sizes, and colors, quite confident that they would be filled, though not a flower had shown its head except a few hardy dandelions, and here and there a small cluster of saxifrage."

Some years I manage a few gum drops in a paper cup with a pipe cleaner handle. Nothing too fancy. My kids liked making May Day baskets when they were little. One year we took one to an older lady in the neighborhood who cried because she remembered getting May Day baskets when she was a little girl in Iowa. Here's a website (of course) with some ideas and directions for May Day baskets.

By late afternoon yesterday, if you had just looked outside, you would have thought it was spring. It was cold and windy, though...much too cold to stand outside while Harvey cooked burgers on the grill. We all huddled in front of the fireplace while he stood out there in his winter coat. We gave Betty patio dishes (plastic ware in bright colors) and a garden flag for her birthday in the great and probably hopeless hope that someday spring will come to Minnesota.

Here's a very sad and sweet story I just read in the Trib. There's a link to a blog written by Matt Logelin from the article. I recommend reading it but you better be ready to take a few of those gulping sobs and then be haunted by it for a long time.

We went to Shopko yesterday and I bought Ella some new toys: Play Dough, a safety scissors, and something called Gazillions of Bubbles. I thought about sidewalk chalk but maybe she's too little for that yet. She asked about the swing last time she was here but I'm not sure she'll fit in that baby swing this year. We may have to go to a bigger size. Maybe Katherine Nova, across the street, can borrow the baby swing. Or the Potts babies. Jill, do you have a tree for a little plastic swing?

I'm anxious to get my new birdbath out. Remember the one I bought at the Rockbend Folk Festival last summer? The birds would have to bring a little hatchet along to chop a hole in the ice if they tried to take a bath in this weather. It's 28 degrees right now.

I have a new niece, Chloe, sister to Ezra. No pictures yet. She was born on Thursday but I don't have many details. The cell phone connection between a hospital in Fargo and my school in St. Peter was not conducive to detail.

If I can get some strong boys over here one day soon, I'm going to mix my furniture up. They've offered to come but I haven't been quite ready. I want to move the sofa and love seat into the dining room and move the dining table into the living room. I'm also going to rent a storage unit for the summer and get some of this stuff out of here and out of my garage. What I should rent is a dumpster. I don't know where this shit comes from, really I don't.

There's a egg-plump robin sitting on the fence outside my window. I can see her fat stomach poking out the sides from behind. Poor thing having to lay eggs in this wind. It will be like the windy day when I put a check in the little sliding drawer at the drive-up window at the bank. A gust of wind came along and took my check and I never saw it again.