happy valentine's day to everyone who's touched my heart...

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You can't smell them, and you can't taste them ... but they're the first strawberries of the season!



And if you dress them up in a chocolate evening gown, their native strawberry flavor is actually detectable...

Well, I just found out I've been tagged by my favorite prairie whisperer to name five things I cannot leave home without. I have to admit, I've been watching all you bloggers scramble to answer this very question and have been quite intrigued!

What can't I live without when I leave the house? My sister-in-law would ask rather ... what can she live without? Ok, I hear you!

So while I don't really cozy up to stating the obvious, this is what I feel is a truthful answer.

1. Boots (come on people, you know it's true!)

2. Pants (can you imagine not naming 'em?)

3. Shirt (I'm not like you guys... clothing means more to me than gum!)

4. Burt's Bees (this might actually fall into first place)

5. My purse! (Oh, I'm sorry, does that not count for only one thing?).

Let's see... who can I tag, who can I tag? Ola. Beyond my Kitchen Window. Diary of a Southern Lady. Definately JOE. And Dawn up in the arctic freeze. :)

Whoops... can't forget Randy. What does a man need in his pockets down in the southwest?

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.






















The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.


-- Seamus Heaney (excerpt from Digging)

Remembering

Unlike Northern America, we are having unseasonably warm weather: 13° yesterday!



I sent my little darlings outdoors to soak in the sun before the next onslaught of winter fury. Hours later this is what I found - an Indian campfire and tiny hands fashioning homemade "bricks". Naturally, the natives were lathered in nice, gooey, spring mud. Bain obligé!



Vittals for the autochthonic of my own backyard. My heart swells.

It wasn't easy leaving my print in this icy snow. The crust was cold and decided, and I had to wiggle my fingers to melt it some so they could crunch down through the frozen sheet of winter.

It is the same with people.

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