Out and About - March

♫Here, There, and Everywhere♫

It seems the weather is going to dominate this month's Out and About...again.  My View Outside My Kitchen Window post on the 1st showed only patches of snow on the ground.  This is what it looked like three days later....

First Day of Spring

♫The Unknown♫

This is what it looked like outside my window as I took down my Winter decor and put up the Spring decor this past Monday....

It was St. Patrick's Day and I decided I was done with Winter even if the weather wasn't!  I had my own evidence from the planter I overwintered in the window that Spring was here ....coleus, petunias, and verbena were blooming....

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

We woke up to a covering of snow this morning.  As always, it is beautiful!  But, after the warm weather we had last week and the discovery of daffodils pushing through the earth, the snow seems out of place this mid-March morning!  So I was delighted to discover Sarah's blog post (in Dorset, England) and be regaled with photos of daffodils and a poem by William Wordsworth.  Sarah asked her readers if we had a favorite childhood poem.  I'd have to say mine would be Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Susan Jeffers has illustrated a beautiful 
children's book of this poem....

If you, too, need a dose of daffodils, be sure to visit Sarah's post A Host of Golden Daffodils.

Poetry the Calico Cat

♫All Creatures Great and Small♫

The story continues....

My plan to get another cat after "writing her into reality" was interrupted when a friend offered me the calico kitten that had been born recently on her farm.  I was only half way through the story I was writing about Gabriel the Snowman turning into a little white dog so he could search for his best friend, Poetry the Calico Cat.  It was too soon, but this kitten presented herself now so I felt I had to be open to this change in my plans.  I would have to wait a few more weeks for the kitten to be weaned, though.  I hadn't even seen it yet when I learned it had grown sick and died.  But my heart was already engaged and the course had been set, so I went to Petfinder to see what they might have and this is who popped up on my screen....

Gabriel the Little White Dog

This is the story of how I came to be the Mum of a West Highland White Terrier named Gabriel....

In November 2007 it was clear that it was time to let my 13-year-old calico cat, Poetry, go.  She had a vaccine-associated scarcoma and could no longer get around on her own.  It was devastating to lose her so soon especially since I had written children's stories about her and a snowman named Gabriel....

Poetry and Gabriel were names Ken and I had chosen for our future children when we were dating.  We changed our minds by the time we had children 12 years later so the names were available for my characters.  Those stories can be found on Poetry's  website.

It took me awhile before I was ready to replace Poetry.  When I did, I realized I was at the point in my life, now that all my children were grown, that I needed a pet that was more cuddly than my various cats had been over the years.  So by the summer of 2008 I approached Ken about getting a dog.

♡ HEARTS ♡

        ♫ ♥Story ♫

♥'s are my theme today.  I went around the house looking for all the hearts I could find.  It's amazing what one notices when one is on a quest.  In my case, it was mostly dust.  In fact, you will actually get to see some of this dust in the following photos.  

I'm also using this post to practice using the free photo editor site I've been using to put frames around my photos.  This is the first time for me to use the collage feature. So, let's get started.  

These are the hearts I found in my kitchen....

View Outside My Kitchen Window - March

♫New Day♫

"Some people say home is where you come from, but I think it's a place you need to find, like it's scattered and you pick pieces of it up along the way."  --from "Awaken"  by Katie Kacvinsky

That ☝ is what I've been thinking about as I gaze out my kitchen window on this first day of March....