What's your fortune, Cookie?

We filled a table at the Chinese restaurant last week, and then we filled our plates...over and over again. Yum.

And when we were too full for another bite, we passed around a bowl of fortunes. Surprisingly several of us had exactly the same fortune.

It had something to do with good business practice. We read our fortunes and practiced our Chinese:

"very healthy = hen jiankang."

We asked our waitress to pronounce the word for "cat" for us - she giggled and said, "Sorry, I'm not Chinese."

My favorite fortune (I kept it and brought it home) :

"Good news of someone dear will come soon"

You know who you are - I'm expecting a letter!

Even without a cookie, I was able to predict that leftovers would be in our future.

Some fortunes come true.

A Spring Treat

Somewhere out in the woods at the end of April mushrooms poke up through the leaves. Not just any mushroom - these are the delicious morels. Where do we find them? Sorry, can't tell - it's super secret.
It helps to take along hunters with keen eyes and a hood to carry the bounty in.
Then it's just a matter of soaking the sliced morels in salt water to get rid of all the various bugs who also love to eat mushrooms.

Fry them up in a little butter and...
YUM! It's a real Spring treat!

Dr. Hausfrau arrives

One day, the fabulous cities and resorts of Europe, the next - The Laughing Planet. Yes, here she is, Dr. Hausfrau herself! We are SO glad to see her!

And - she brought Swiss chocolate!
So - how to celebrate? Let's go shoe shopping!







That was exhausting - we need some refreshment at Roots.
And a nap....(no pictures of the nap).
Later: the Indy contingent arrives and we all head to Lennie's where a little confusion ensues -who's talking to whom?

Over a fine meal we all catch up on the latest,
tease a little, argue a little, share some opinions and
in general enjoy ourselves.

Hooray for international travel!

Found in the stacks

Someone tucked a fortune teller in between the books. I pulled it out as I was putting the shelf in order. Fun! Let's see what my fortune is:

First pick a color.... I'll say "blue". B...L...U...E.. Okay, now pick a number.
I'll say 16. 1..2..3...4...5...6..7...8..9...10..11..12...13...14...15...16

What's my fortune?

I am an apple????

I got lucky. I could have been a pencil.

Every Spring is new

Do you ever wonder if after, say, 60 or 80 years, you will get tired of Spring? Will you yawn and say "So what another daffodil? Seen one, seen them all."
My experience indicates that no, this will not happen.
Each Spring my mother wrote with delight to tell me what flowers were blooming in her yard - when the redbud came out, when the first color showed on the forsythia.
After 80 years of watching buds swell and bloom, she was still excited about this year and still looking for all the tiny details that made every year different.




I find myself marveling over Spring in the same way. Every morning I check to see what is newly blooming, what half-opened buds are now open, what new sprouts are poking up.
I've enjoyed a lot of Springs. Each Spring bloom is still a celebration.














I have to bring some of these bright beauties inside.
I set them on my table. In my mother's vase.

I wish I could call her up to say "Guess what bloomed today!"

What everyone in Indiana and Illinois is blogging about today

At 5:30 this morning I was sound asleep. Maybe not so sound - I do have a vague memory of a complicated dream - but still asleep. Suddenly I was shaken awake, starting up in the darkness to hear a roar as if a train was somehow impossibly running right against the wall. The wall was trembling. The bed vibrated with the deep rumbling sound outside. It wasn't thunder - it kept going on and on.

My first thought was - tornado? But T. said, earthquake.

We don't have earthquakes, I said, we have tornadoes. Know your local disaster. Earthquake, he said, and earthquake it was.

When the rumbling and trembling stopped I went to check on the gas lines and so on. It seemed as if something that powerful should have done some sort of damage. Amazingly, it seems as if everything essential is just fine.

Except now I have to worry about earthquakes as well as tornados.

On to the farm

It was a perfect spring day today, just the right sort of day to go for a picnic on the porch of the old farm house.

The turkey vultures floated over head and the cattle enjoyed the sunshine and fresh green grass.
The ancient pear tree, so hollow at the foot that one can't see how it still stands up, was blooming one more year.
Mimi and I took shovel and bucket up the creek bed to dig up some wildflowers.
The little white flowers were out - the little spring beauties and bloodroot and tiny star-shaped flowers whose name I don't remember. There were a few yellow trout lilies nodding here and there. I caught a glimpse of a trillium just coming up and the mayapples were just pushing through the leaves.
The ferns were delicately unfurling above last year's leaves.
As I was removing the very first tick of the year I heard Mimi gasping - Is everything all right? Yes!She found the first morel of the year!

Old books

I spent an afternoon this past week going through the shelves looking for books to take out of the collection - this is not easy for me. (I am also lousy at weeding a garden.) But it is Spring and time for Spring cleaning the library.

I pull out a book that looks slightly dusty and unused. Look at this old novel from 1964. Those innocent looking kids on the cover. The sappy title. The predictable, not very well constructed plot. Read a little bit of it. Nobody talked like that when they were 10. And oops, is this stereotypical or what! It's really not a good book. It really is time to throw it out, make room for something new. I read a little more, trying to convince myself. I think - could I possibly see myself giving this book to a kid? Naw...couldn't do it. If there is still a reader for this book, it's not one of our students. Put it in the discard pile.

And as I do so, I picture the long-ago author hopefully putting words together, sending off that miserable manuscript, the pride of being accepted, the joy of holding that book fresh off the press and seeing it in print. Sometime, somewhere, someone read that book and enjoyed it.

There is a tall stack of books to be withdrawn by the time I leave the library. I go home with bits and pieces of old stories cluttering up my brain until the fresh Spring breeze blows them away.

Day of the Daffodil

Yesterday Spring sprang.
Forget that slow unfolding bit. This is a year of sudden excess - all the Narcissus burst into bloom at once.

It was the day of the Daffodil.

The weather changes

I'm caught by a little mist rising from the water.

Early morning sun draws it up. What does it portend?

The cool air is full of bright bird calls.

Don't I have a hundred things to do?