Spring Fever!

We all have it. And it's about time! We had more periods of severe (for us) weather than usual this winter, and spring has finally begun showing up in the buds on my ornamental pear and other flowering trees, the daffodils in full bloom, the decreasing number of birds at our feeders, and the repetitive THWACK! and Sproing! noise of a basketball being dribbled and bounced off the rim in the driveway. Today was beautiful, and I was able to take this shot of tiny purple anenome flowers amongst the relatively giant daffodils. I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with the photo considering grandson Milo, who is now four-and-a-half months old and getting very grabby, 'helped' me take it.

Dearest spent a lot of time turning over the raised beds, and Girlie will be out carefully checking on her 'baby' trees and the volunteer snapdragons she lovingly took out of the vegetable garden last fall and planted in pots. I ponied up for new garden gloves (Costco has packs of SIX PAIRS of nitrile coated gloves for $7.99 - about what you'd pay for two pairs in a hardware store) because I can't stand it when the dirt starts getting caked on the inside of the fingertips. I'm not a habitual gardener, but I do love cleaning out my few bulb and peony planters in the spring, with an earbud playing an audiobook in one ear and birds singing courtship songs in the other.

Sounds like all is right with the world, yes? No. In fact, Girlie will be saying good-bye to The Pup at the end of April after all. He is going back to California early because he is large and smart and needs expert schooling - he has the makings of an exceptional guide dog, but his 'teenage rebellion' is hard to handle in a family setting. Reportedly, at least one of his litter mates is in the same situation. Guide dogs are bred to have initiative, and to show 'intelligent disobedience'. Consider this - if something unexpected is in the road and the blind handler tells the dog to go forward, the dog has to be smart enough to force the handler into a different, safer path. (Not all dogs will do that; some are dropped from the program because they don't have enough initiative to disobey when necessary.) But when that dog is a young upstart with a sassy attitude, he learns very quickly that he can try to boss some of his family members around, and it's clear that he needs a real job before he gets in trouble. 

Our coordinator came to talk with Girlie today and show her a few more tricks to handle The Pup for the next several weeks before he goes. She also asked Girlie to continue with the program even after The Pup leaves, by helping handle the coordinator's new puppy-in-training while she's leading the classes (it's great how the promise of puppy cuddles can take some of the sting out of a problem!). The Pup will still be here to help Girlie celebrate her 14th birthday next month, and they'll get to go on one more training outing together with the group. Girlie will be fine, in the long run, but I'm stocking up on Kleenex because she is already tearing up at random times when she thinks about him leaving. Thankfully it will happen at a time of year when there are so many other things that Girlie loves capturing her attention.

Spring fever affects my knitting, too - who wants to think about winter knits when it's finally warm enough to take my sweater off? I fell in love with this Mini Mania Scarf pattern and decided to knit it as a table runner with all my left over sock yarn. I've never knitted linen stitch before and I absolutely love it; it's repetitive and soothing (that means 'boring' to many knitters), but very fun to see the color development. I always want to keep knitting to see what will happen when I add the next yarn!

300 stitches wide, about 1.5 inches of fabric so far, using 7 different sock yarns.