Lady! Get out here!

Look!

Snow. And there was lots of it. 

It was in the 60s yesterday. And just yesterday I noticed that the daylilies were coming up.

Spring steps forward and then takes two steps back. Uh, maybe three.

A day just full of events

Today is Mardi Gras so I thought I'd post something about my turn of the century fan from Switzerland. It's made of a lot of different crepe papers, some plain, and some with painted/printed designs (back then, it was not unusual to have gold ink printed on the crepe paper too).

The little figure has a die-cut scrap face glued to a cardboard body. She is dressed in more crepe paper and she is holding a pitchfork made of gold metallic paper glued onto cardboard. There are lots of pretty little gold decals floating on her costume and in the background. I think she looks like a little butterfly among the stars. 

But when you turn it over, you see a mirror (reflecting whoever is looking at it) and gold cut-out paper letters that spell out the word "hell" in french.

Well, and oh my. Not sure what to make of that. I'm assuming this was made for a Mardi Gras type holiday in Switzerland. Just another curious thing in my ephemera collection that I hope to find more about in the future. :-)

And today is also the day I got to see Rane again and to meet his friend Carse. I had NO problem recognizing Rane. And he had no problem recognizing me because apparently I have the same walk. :-/ That's what he said. I picked them up at Union Station and we went off to eat breakfast at Succotash and one of us (not me) had pear and pecan pancakes because today is also International Pancake Day. 

And while I was writing this I heard a racket on the deck and when I just checked to see what was going on, look who showed up after being gone for nearly two months...

Oh that Freddie. I opened the backdoor carefully to give him his plate of cat food but he managed to grab my leg. That surprised me so I dropped the plate and quickly got behind the screen door and Freddie got surprised himself and jumped backward. Gawd. That little raccoon was starving. Look how thin he is...

Freddie was a little put out because as we all know, he does not like to eat off of floors. He likes plates. But I was not going to take the time to carefully place another plate in front of him if he was going to grab and jump on me. So Freddie had to roll his food back onto the plate that was out there. Freddie's hunger eventually got the best of him and within a minute or two of impatient cat food rolling, he just started chomping on anything he could find.

Then it was time for a clean up and a short rest on the glider while that awful cat that smells like cigarettes made sure Freddie behaved.

I don't think he appreciated the feline supervision.

So off he went and we could tell where he was going by the dog barking we could hear as he travelled through each yard. Must be hard to be a raccoon in a dog and cat and possum world. 

San Francisco, 1978

This is me at 21 posing in front of the Safeway on Market Street.

And this is Rane at 28 doing a much better job of posing than me. Ha ha ha. For some reason when I took the picture, I made sure he had a church steeple as a hat, not sure why.

Rane and I met when we both lived in Minneapolis and in 1977 we both moved to Northern California within a couple months of each other. I have not heard from him in over 20 years but a couple weeks ago he called and said he would be in Kansas City...and when he arrives tomorrow at the train station, we both get to try and figure out what old strange looking person is the former person we knew. We both now have white hair and I'm 52 (which I find really funny because it sounds so old) but Rane is going to be 60 and that I think, is even funnier. Rane said people don't really change that much. I know that's true but if we don't recognize each other, I'm going to have to reconsider my opinion on that one. :-)

Look what I found in my backyard...

Daffodils!  Daffodils! That means spring is sort of happening now, right?

Every year around this time I think that winter will linger for as many months as it takes to get to the end of the year and that I will never, ever see spring again. Or summer. Or fall. Just winter, winter, winter forever and ever, as if the house I live in had moved itself to Narnia. I know that's silly but some years I truly feel in my bones that winter will never end.

I rely on one book to get me through this every year. I hadn't thought to get it out yet since my mind has been distracted with other things. But now with this sudden appearance of daffodils (and tulips!) erupting from the temporarily thawed ground, I don't think I need the book to convince me that spring is on its way...but you might. :-)

The name of the book is "Dirt: The Lowdown on Growing a Garden with Style" by Dianne Benson. It was written by a woman who was in the fashion industry who carries her fashion sense into the garden, along with some very strong opinions about things. :-) I  first bought this book around the time I started my garden and pretty much adopted all of her opinions about what are good and not so good plants. I think the only thing I didn't adopt was her opinion about what to wear in the garden because I'm such a slob...not that I wouldn't like to surprise myself one year by following her example of always having an extra pocket in the gardening outfit for a tube of lipstick. 

"The most vivid image I hold dear of a true gardener is the balmy, sunlit, uniquely English day when my incomparable True Brit old boyfriend, Timothy Andreae, took me to the Family Lodge in Hampshire to meet Mother. She was, appropriately, in her rose garden. In my now calm recollection, it appears as quite the fantastic garden, but at the time--so mesmerized by the fading, bald Persian rugs, so unattuned to their debate on dowager's cottages, so anxious to join in their breezy conversation about Oxford dons, and so unable to discuss the roses--it was her endless application of bright red lipstick (which she kept stored in her gardening apron) that enraptured me most and made a poignant, unforgettable, and indelible impression. One should never disregard the glamour."

The part of the book I rely on every year is the section that reads from month to month of what is going on in the garden and what you should be doing in the garden at that time. I find myself reading the current month as well as the future month so I know what I can look forward to, as well as being reassured that it will happen. 

The gardening information is thorough and excellent and written from personal experience, and since it's written by someone with fashion and design experience, it doesn't read like just about every other garden book you pick up. And she's funny, too. :-)

Woo hoo!!! I have proof that spring is going to happen once again!