Won't you be my neighbor?  Did you traipse around in peoples' back yards yesterday on Becky's Back Yard Field Trip?  What a fine virtual neighborhood we make, populated by some very fine and extraordinary people!  There are some late entries, so check the list again.  It was a blast and a nice way to spend a Sunday morning.  It looks like Becky will continue with a monthly-on-a-Sunday-morning themed picture post; I couldn't be happier about that.

We had a little snow since y'all were over visiting yesterday.  It started in the late afternoon and it was still snowing this morning -- and it's still snowing now!  I love the "blue period" that often occurs at this time of year, both in the morning and in the evening, when everything outside is blue -- it never lasts long, but it seems magical somehow. There are of the "lower yard" and were taken this morning from the end of the back porch.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be sunny and then it's going to warm up and be rainy -- this is all going to turn ugly pretty soon.

When Mom and I arrived at the hospital yesterday, we rounded the corner to the ICU waiting area and immediate spotted my SIL with knitting needles and yarn every-which-way.  She had just finished ripping, having cast on 27 of the required 30 stitches for her dishcloth and coming up short on the tail end.  She's not sure she can concentrate enough for a 6-stitch, 6-row repeat -- pshaw, we said, garter stitch makes a nice cloth, too.  She seemed happy enough to put it away and talk for a while instead.  I'm so thankful that her sister is arriving later today.  I can be the boss of my brother, but I'm not comfortable being the boss of her -- and I think she needs to be bossed, even for just a day.

My own knitting?  Slow, slow progress on that Trekking sock...

Grocery shopping with five kids in a six-year range was an odyssey for our mother.  I remember that we'd get half-way through the store and the cart would be full, so one of us older girls would be sent to get another.  She bought at least four gallons of milk each time, and I recall the total for two heaping-full carts of groceries being around $60.00.  When he was little, my brother was very well acquainted with the managers of all of our favorite grocery stores because, inevitably, Mom would have to take him back to apologize and return and/or pay for the candy bar he'd stolen.  It's a wonder she didn't start to strip-search him before we even left.  He had the stickiest fingers ever!