Title! Bahh, I can't think of a title.

It took the girls a few minutes to warm up to Uncle Tobler, but warm up to him they did.

It's so windy outside right now, the storm windows are rattling and the house is creaking in some suspicious places. I asked Jen earlier if we have wind insurance. She either didn't find it amusing or didn't hear me, because there was no response. She is now claiming (as she's right beside me on the couch. Actually, not quite right beside me: it's Elly the britany, me, Olly the beagle, then Jen, all like happy little sardines) that she never heard me, which I believe since she is one of the most deaf non-deaf people ever. She also does the worst Count from Sesame Street impersonation I've ever heard; it sounds like a gut-shot englishman. But that's pretty irrelevant; sorry to disappoint, I'm not going to tie in Jen's impersonations to some larger theme of this post later on. If this little experiment devolves into a simple forum to poke fun at my spouse, it might have to come to a (hilariously) early end.

So, it's windy. I have a dog on each hip (and one is raking me with her paws). We just flipped on the news, and there is an ominous and amorphous blob of monsoon bearing down on the cities. Upstairs, the girls are snoring. It's quite cozy. It feels very spring-like.

Outside, my plants are starting to limber up. The sumacs are showing signs of life. The ambitious chokeberry is wasting no time shooting up with new growth. My rhododendron is stubbornly waiting for warmer breezes, as always. It's the big reveal we get every year, when I get to take my daily 50 yard constitutional and find out what's going to push up, and what I ended up donating to the big compost bin in the ground. Very exciting times. That I now get to share these walks with the girls makes spring even more awesome.

Now that winter's almost taken a final bow, some of these posts may turn to gardening subjects, of which I'm a new and eager learner. This year, my landscaping budget is hovering somewhere around $0, so I'm going to set the goal for the year of being a scratch gardener...everything I'm going to take in, I will get from plant swaps or just steal outright from yards I admire. Bachman's has taken enough of my money; as I wryly pointed out years ago when I started working the yard, "plants don't grow on trees".

If you are hip to any genius ways of getting lots of shrubbery on the cheap, please share. Or, if you want to swap plants with me (or donate them outright), bring it on. I'd especially love some large-ish river birch and a couple staghorn sumacs.

I've avoided the girls this entire post, which isn't fair since they were fantastic all day. Super kids, almost the entire day was quite pleasant. We took a walk down on Minnehaha path just north of Lake Nokomis with the kids in backpacks and the dogs on leashes. It would have been a perfect time to take pictures, and I did in fact bring the camera in the car, but eventually decided not to bring it. I am a slave to that camera sometimes (I took almost 400 shots today), and although it's my own damn hobby, it is very freeing to just leave that thing behind and live untethered. This is advice that I need to remember more often.

The girls laughed much of the walk. We are trying to point out objects as much as possible now ("Lake!", "Rock!", "Tree!", "Dog poop!"), so there was a lot of that happening. We got some stares.

Later on our friend Erik came by to visit, primarily for the girls, but he talked to us out of kindness and sympathy. It was a dubious start, as they were quite wary of him (he is scary), but they gave in to his charms, and Lily even let him put her down for a nap.

That's the day. This is a long post. If you're still reading this...my apologies.

Day thirty five.

This is a view I often get of Lily.

CrocoLily.

Abbygator.

This look, I have no idea where this came from, I've never seen it before, though Jen says she has. It is completely random when kids do new faces. This one is particularly hilarious.