Not that winter is over, mind you, but today was spring-like enough to get me to take another stab at the beginning of cleaning up after a winter that was snow and ice and wind and more snow and ice and wind and a lot of really cold temperatures – the kind that make you say to heck with everything else, just do your task and get back inside.

This is our little pile of stick when we started; we’ll use them for kindling when it gets cold again. It is now a big pile, but I forgot to take a picture.

This is a broken bough that wound up by the woodpile by the door.

And this . . . this is the old pioneer beam that fell off of the two big rocks on which it was balanced.

Oh, and here’s the woodpile by the hedge that was three rows deep and did the little avalanche thing while covered with ice and snow. It was an adventure to climb up and chisel some logs loose.

And here is Sydney, thinking “So much work” and lamenting the fact that the squirrel that split the cone on the driveway is long gone.

And, finally, the blue spruce with some branches in front of it that just might be getting ready to bud.

I was working outside today at my own pace; it was warm and the breeze caused strands of hair to flutter across my eyes and dry leaves to scatter along the driveway. It’s times like that I get to thinking and today I was thinking of this guy:

“He looks like he’s going to cry.” That’s what my dad said when he saw the picture one of the times he and Mother came to West Chester. I can see my dad now, sitting at the end of the trestle table, eating a sandwich and chuckling at the picture. Sometime I will post  my school picture when I was that age – I looked like I was going to chew nails and spit them out. Kind of my usual expression.