Regardless of how desperately I have missed “real” winter this year, I have absolutely nothing to complain about when the days down here have been in the 80′s. It is completely delightful!! Everything is still as brown as can be, so I try to overlook the lack of loveliness around me by remembering that come Springtime, it actually does become very beautiful here. And Springtime is just around the corner, for us Southern folks! These days now actually feel like early summer in the north.
Having a little toddler that begs to go outside each and every day, I am equally delighted when the weather permits her to go out and play - for hours, if I allow it. She feeds the dog [or so she thinks: dumps her food all over the garage floor], then goes and inspects the 100 remaining chickens [notice the numbers are slowly decreasing]. The past few days we’ve had a little adventure with the chickens. Nothing major to most of you, I’m sure, but when I’m the 28-week-pregnant woman racing around in the yard trying to catch 6 football-sized chickens running away from you, I consider it a rather large feat to get them all back in. Now when we feed them, we are ever so careful to c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y close all possible latches whereby the chickens could escape. We don’t want all 100 running away from me, now do we?? No, indeed we do not. In that case, I’m sure the remaining number of chickens would decrease even more rapidly, as Large Pregnant Women are not very good Candidates for Catching Chickens.
Last Saturday Ben has a side job to do, and because it was his 3rd Saturday in a row that he was going to be gone, he asked me if I’d want to go along with him. My first reaction was that I’d love to go – if it would be only me. Taking an 18-month old along to a side construction job didn’t sound like a very good idea though… Who knows what all she would get into? And how in the world would I keep her entertained the whole 4-5 hours?? But going along seemed to be better than staying at home alone, so we all piled in Ben’s Blue Bulldog [what we affectionately call his early 90's Chevy truck] and away we went.
I grabbed my camera on the way out the door, and snapping pictures was what I ended up doing all afternoon. The lighting was too bright for the the color to look good, so I shot on monochrome. And what fun using the new camera lense I’m buying from Marylou!
For those of you who aren’t family, this might be rather boring – mostly pictures of Zoe! 
The dear older man for whom Ben was working… I tried so hard to get a secretive shot of him smoking his pipe, and this was the best I could do without him knowing it. I was snapping pictures of Zoe’ all around him, so he didn’t know I also wanted this one of him! I felt like I was back in time with him sitting there with his old pipe…
She found all kinds of things in his yard to drag around…
and found Daddy’s tools most fascinating.
He was very concerned that we didn’t get hungry or thirsty, even though we had packed a lunch of our own, and brought out ice-cold coca-cola and chocolates for a snack. Zoe’ was thrilled!
He owns this adorable old, old tractor… wish I would have taken this in color so you can see the bright red…
and this old barn is his…
this large pond…
was right behind his house where Ben was working. All day I kept fearing that Zoe’ would decide to run and jump into it, and almost drown. Thankfully she decided to do no such thing…
I had nothing planned for supper with being gone most of the day, so we whipped up some broiled sub sandwiches. And just for fun, using my new lense, seeing how I can focus on one tomato with the rest being blurry… Ooooo, that makes me hungry all over again…
Time for a little sunshine! Have a splendid weekend – each and every one!
