I made it as far as the duck’s nest in the garden without the dog, only to discover a housecat from next door watching over the eggs. Even if the duck returns, hatchlings are unlikely to survive long.

Up higher, birds may have better luck. The European starlings in the eave outside our bathroom window start peeping excitedly every time someone steps into the room. They can’t see who’s coming, but apparently assume whoever it is has a mouthful of worms and insects. We can’t see them either, of course, and even their parents are shy. We only glimpse an adult bird (or birds) flying quickly away from the house whenever we come near, and even then it hides behind a leafy branch when it perches in a nearby tree.

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Cameron Perry is a young woman in the Toronto area whose webpages I have followed for some time. Not only is she an excellent writer (one of her posts called How to Make the Perfect Omelette belongs in its own newspaper column), she is a talented seamstress and artist. Her business used to be (and perhaps still is) to be hired to go to parties and draw caricatures of the guests. I loved her posts about that.

I got this from her webpage:

"A quote from, of all people, Tom Hanks in this month's Esquire- 'It's binary: Either it works or it doesn't. The language of the universe is math.'
He speaks of movies and of marriages: there's no middle ground, either the project flies or it doesn't."

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Does anybody watch Just for Laughs on CBC on Friday nights? The crew films the reactions of people to harmless jokes played on them on the streets of Montreal (maybe; it's a French-speaking town anyway, I can tell by lip-reading). Their responses are priceless.

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We're off to Scott's nephew's grad party this afternoon so I must get a dessert whipped up and make myself presentable. But first, a walk in the grey and cold is in order. I'll have to put on my winter duds again by the look of things.

~Everett holds umbrella over Emil
as they make their way to the bus ~

With the pleasant weather we've had in the past week, my reading time has been limited to right before the lamp beside my bed goes out at night. Yesterday was cold and grey though, and today is rainy. This weather has created a farming disaster. Many in this area will not get a crop into the ground in time (if at all) to hope for a harvest.

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I laughed out loud at “hanging out--casual” here.
Thanks to Stacia, who provided the link.

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I receive some lovely mail from readers, and if it didn’t mean putting in a lot of tracking-down-permissions and copying-and-pasting time, I’d post more of them. Why don’t you guys hit the Comments link at the bottom of each entry a little more often? You know -- quit hiding your little lights under a bushel! Unless I am wrong, remarks such as the following (see below) might be interesting to other readers. Okay, they're interesting to me.

For instance, Mom’s dear friend Joanne responded to yesterday’s photo of Grandma Johnson’s vase:

Ah, seeing the vase brought back memories of the Johnson home and the good times we had there. We both had wondered if it ever crossed your mind that Edna was your age when she passed away ... what a young age! I don't see you looking like her BUT you move like her ... quickly and smartly!

To which I replied, Yeah but do I walk like I have a stick up my ass, as my soon-to-be ex-hubby says about the gait I apparently share with Dad, which we must have inherited from his mom?

And Claire, whom I have never met, could imagine unseen similarities to the women who went before us:

When I lived in Massachusetts, and husband worked in Salem, I always would look at places "witches" were burned and think, "There but for the grace of God, and time...it's me."

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