Hi, everyone!
I’ve been waiting for spring and it has been a long wait! After the travel dinner, I helped Grandma prune the apple trees. This year, we could do most of the pruning with pruning shears and lopping shears. I helped Grandma use the lopping pole to reach the highest branches, but we didn’t need to use the pruning saw at all! Grandma was happy the weather stayed cold until the pruning was done!
Our first purple crocus didn’t bloom until March 25 this year! And when it did bloom, there were still six inches of snow on most of the lawn. I saw deer tracks in the snow the same day! I hope the deer haven’t been eating our rhododendron blossoms again!
My best buddies Joe-san and Nancy-san and Moose-san came over one evening to have dinner with James and Thomas and their mommy. Thomas made friends with Moose-san right away! James really liked sitting in the driver’s seat of Joe-san’s red sports car and pretending to drive it. He even showed Moose-san and me how to do it!
Guess what? Grandma finally finished the big Japanese jigsaw she’s been working on since Christmas! Before she took it apart, she said she wanted to make all that work worth it. So I helped Grandpa make a puzzle sandwich with two big pieces of wood and we flipped the puzzle over. Then I helped Grandma number all the pieces. Grandma says that if she ever decides to do the puzzle again, she’ll at least know whether the pieces she puts together really belong together!
The week before Easter, Thomas and James and their mommy and Grandma and I went to Lamberton Conservatory in Highland Park to see the Easter flower display. I went there with James when he was the age Thomas is now. I got to show Thomas the flowers and the button quail and the turtles. James really liked sitting on the bench in the tropical plant room! I saw my friends the cactus plants, too. There was a hibiscus blossom as big as me!
On Easter weekend, James told his mommy that he wanted sticky buns to eat. He came over to play cars with Grandpa and roll out sticky bun dough with Grandma. Then he baked a pan of magnet “cookies” before he took the pans of sticky buns back to Grandma Ginny’s to bake on Easter morning. Grandma and Grandpa and I went to Joe-san and Nancy-san’s house for Easter dinner. My friends Moose-san and Tilly helped Joe-san make the appetizers. After dinner I helped Moose-san and Tilly serve the sour cream cherry pie that Grandma made for dessert.
Today, the last of the snow in Grandma and Grandpa’s yard finally melted! The last snow pile was on the back deck, where the snow Grandpa brushed off the roof landed. Since the snow was gone, I helped Grandma rake up all the branches we pruned off the apple trees. Then I visited all my crocus and snowdrop friends in bloom and said hello to the daffodil sprouts. One of the maple trees in the back yard started leaning way over during the winter! Last week, when Karin-chan started first grade in Japan, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. The buds on our apple trees haven’t even started turning green yet!
Tonight James and Thomas and their mommy are flying back to the Netherlands. It’s already spring there, too!
Love,
Lion-san
It has taking a long time for Spring to come! We were glad James liked Joe-san’s car. Did the Cactus remember you? Nancy-san had trouble seeing the stack of turtles but Joe-san saw them and pointed them out to Nancy-san. We have seen crocus flowering on our walk. They are all purple though. We can see the daffodils popping up in our yard too! It was nice having you over to help with the appitizers and to serve the pie!