BBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRR!

The view from our patio doors....

Pretty, right?

It's currently a toasty 15 degrees outside...

I confess, I am OVER IT!

This photo is my garden - you can see the sad pot that never made it into the storage area...and I am looking forward to spring with a deep sort of aching feeling. Seed & garden catalogs are arriving in the mail weekly - one of my favorites is Seeds of Change . Seed catalogs and spring training are always two of my real spring fever triggers - and they've both arrived! So - for todays lessons we'll be reading the story of Persephone ,

and planning out our seed order! We usually plant seedlings purchased from the garden supply store, but this year we plan to plant our own indoors & see how that goes! And when we've finished todays lessons?

BASEBALL!!!!

PAT AND RON are back on the air with the Spring Training opener from Scottsdale! Cubs at Giants - GO CUBS GO!!!

Here is todays poem:

THE OLD CRICKETER

All winter long, in the slush and the mud and the darkness,

Treading the lonely round of the yards and the pastures,

Working the ploughland and tending the cattle,

He would remember the sun and the summer,

And long for the flowering of blackthorn,

The ripple and sheen of young barley.

Then when April was come he would go to his kitchen

And take down a bat that was slung by the fireplace,

Caressing the willow of strange antique pattern,

Tortuous of grain and darkened by wood-smoke,

More precious to him than elm, oak or beechwood,

Dearer than cedars of Lebanon.

And would call up his friends in the villages,

In the hamlets, the farms and the homesteads,

For the April annointing of cider and linseed,

Linseed oil for the bat and the cider for friendship.

And the old men would come to stand by the barrel,

Mighty men of the past, red-faced with weather

And many a glass of the plum and the parsnip;

Recalling the glory they knew in their prime,

All batsmen and bowlers of note, who terrified parishes.

-Frank Mansell