Alice and I are at my mother's house. I managed to finish these guys. I was pleased that they had reached the stage where some were seeding and blowing away, while the next generation was blooming like crazy.

Another tobacco barn, this one in Hadley instead of Hatfield. It was freshly plowed around it yesterday, and the trees on the hillside behind it are a haze of blooms and tiny green leaves.

There I was driving along and I saw three dogwood trees in a row, three different colors. One deep maroon, one lovely pink, and one white with just tiny touches of pink in the centers. So I made that.

The wind shifted last night, and was cooler today, but still terribly dry. All the small creeks I cross out riding are down to stones and a dribble of water, and the marshes are parched. It isn't supposed to be this dry at this time of year; the ground would (usually) still be thawing, and things would be muddy and sticky and the river would be high.

One of the maple trees on the way to the barn is both blooming in red/brown and either blooming or leafing out in that amazing zingy spring green. I was so astonished I took a picture of it, and there it is.

Aerin takes pleasure in reminding me that it was about this time one year when she was small (and thus had a loose grasp of time) that I startled her by shouting "look! Quick! The trees are blooming, and it goes by so fast!!" and she whirled in her seat hoping to catch a tree in the act of floofing out. Of course it feels fast to me, it takes a week or so, and then everything will be leaves and green, and not this lovely lacey in-between.

Aerin says when she was really small, it was not clear to her that the seasons happened. One day was a lot like the next, and things took a really long time. It was hard to remember when it had been really different.

The grape hyacinths are out in force. They are a wonderful color, and they smell so sweet. It took two colors of thread to get the color I was looking for; one chicory blue (that lovely ambiguous purpley-blue) and one dusty purple.

I brought the camera with me to the barn so my instructor might take take some pictures of me during my lesson, and I am pretty sure it is still in my boot bag, so I wound up taking the picture of today's circle with the camera on the phone. I would have retrieved the camera from the boot bag, except the elder child has the car to see a show in town.

I am thinking I should make my circle before I go to circus class, because when I do circus right, I am sore and tired and all I want is to lie down and sleep. Also when I do a lot of work on the trapeze, as today, my hands are very sore.

Wild weather today: two short fierce hailstorms, brilliant sun, billowy clouds, and a lot of wind. I love the way the willows act as tell-tales in the wind. As it gets stronger, the branches fly farther and farther out, closer to horizontal.

While lying on my back under the dogwood tree I happened to roll over and look out across the lawn. I remember thinking about being tiny and imagining life where grass was a jungle.  I also remember wistfully looking at the fungi that grow out in shelves from trees, and thinking they would be perfect places for houses.