We've had a busy day today. We took advantage of the nice weather - really NICE! - and walked early this morning. Things are pretty quiet along W. Shore Road, but each time we walk there we notice signs that someone has returned for the summer. We worked outside this afternoon. Fred ran through the chipper the limbs from one of our cedar trees that had been broken by the heavy snow we had a couple weeks ago and I did a quick weeding in the flower beds and used the chips as mulch. It always smells so good, especially since most of it was cedar. That and the fragrance from the apple trees was just about as "lovely a spring essence" as you could imagine.

We had a fun time last night. We went with Bill and Diane Rossi to the Tamarack Grill at Burke Mountain. The bar was lively but we had the dining room to ourselves and enjoyed looking out at the ski slopes and watching the bikers coming down off the mountain trails. Diane very much wanted to show us the moon as it comes up over the mountain, but we didn't see it and Rachel, our waitress, said we'd just missed a beautiful double rainbow. We were on the wrong side of the lodge to see the sunset fully, but it was lovely shining through the big windows onto the folks in the bar. When we were leaving, we saw the moon high in the sky above us. Very nice, even though we'd missed it as it came up. It wasn't dark when we left, but we could hear the frogs singing in the meadow below the parking lot. This picture of Bill and Fred was as we were getting ready to leave.

Fred and I had been to Littleton to have the car serviced yesterday morning, and while that was being done, we walked over to Home Depot. It's always fun to go there even when you don't need anything. We picked up some new batteries for our solar pathway lights I put in the garden and found some LED ones that cost less than a package of new batteries! We got two of them to try out and when we got home Fred stuck them out on the lawn to charge. This morning we noticed one was tipped over and when I went to retrieve it I found the point that drives into the ground was broken off. Not only that, the light was smudged with dirt. Since they were on the lawn where there was no dirt, we concluded some good sized animal had investigated them during the night, knocked it over and broke it and then slobbered all over it. At least it wasn't chewed on. And tonight the new light works just fine in spite of getting some rough treatment.

That's me hunting for parsnip seeds. I haven't been able to find any in the regular seed racks. There was a huge selection of both vegetable and flower seeds at Home Depot, but the closest I could come to parsnips was a packet of radish seeds with a picture of a long white root and description saying it tasted "a little like parsnip." I passed on that. I want my radishes to taste like radishes, and I'll keep looking for parsnips.

I had a nice note from a cousin in California today. She told me her husband, my cousin Foster Bolton, just celebrated his 90th birthday and they had an open house thinking there would be only a few people, but about 48 showed up. They had a great time and he was really pleased. It's been probably 15 or more years since I've seen them, but Foster grew up in Cabot. He was the son of Raymond and Maidene (Walbridge) Bolton and has a younger sister, Marilyn, still in Vermont. Marilyn and her husband, David Perrin, are the ones who just published a book about the friendship quilt they came across in North Dakota a few years ago that had originated here in Cabot.

Which reminds me, Blanche Lamore's birthday open house is tomorrow afternoon from 3-5 at the church. Blanche is 98. Also, the Joe's Pond Association board meeting is tomorrow morning at the pavilion at 10 a.m. If anyone wants something you want on the agenda, let me know - or better yet, come to the meeting. Spring meeting for all members is next Saturday, the 29th.