Hi, everyone!
When Grandpa started printing the new set of photos for the travel dinner, LIC and I tried to help! First, we made sure the pictures telling the story of the year stayed in the right order! Then we checked to make sure the photos were trimmed and put on the door in a nice straight line!
Grandma had lots of papers with her plans for the travel dinner, so LIC and I helped her keep track of those, too! Then we watched the ice cream maker while Grandma made a trial batch of passion fruit sorbet. When Grandma made the sticky toffee pudding, I showed LIC how to glaze it.
The weather got colder just before the travel dinner, so Grandma was able to use the trunk of her car as a second refrigerator for the food that needed to stay cold. Moose-san and Tilly came with Joe-san and Nancy-san to help with the last preparations!
We all had a good time at the travel dinner! Grandma made a special beast snack for us to have as an appetizer. After dessert was served, Tilly and Moose-san and I made sure to say hello to all of our church friends. La Vache and LIC made friends right away! La Vache invited LIC to come live with her and both grandmas said yes!
In the middle of last week, we had some warmer weather! Grandma got back out to work on pruning the apple trees. There was still such a big plow pile of snow next to the first tree that Grandma couldn’t use a step ladder to reach the branches. I helped her with the pole pruner, instead! While we were working, we saw and heard geese flying overhead! That might be a sign of winter being over, except they were mostly flying west, not north!
On Thursday and Friday, we finally had some not-winter temperatures! Grandma got the three biggest apple trees pruned the way she wanted them. We also got some of the branches that came down in the big wind storms picked up and stacked for the town to pick up.
My cactus friend is blooming again! When I looked while we were cleaning up branches, I saw some of my daffodil friends sprouting! It doesn’t feel quite like spring, but at least it’s not still winter!
Friday afternoon, Grandma and Grandpa took me out to the bay! Guess what? There was a big tree down across the road! Luckily, it had broken into pieces, so Grandma and Grandpa could move it out of the way. I don’t know what kind of tree it was, but it had fuzzy buds like a pussy willow! I think the pileated woodpecker had been working on the trunk!
There’s still ice on the bay in front of our place, but it’s starting to melt in places. Grandpa says we’ll wait to cut up the big branches that fell in the yard at the bay this winter until the lawn dries out a little more. This morning we had snow, but most of it melted in the sunshine. I guess that’s a sign of not-winter, but I’m still not sure it’s spring!
Love,
Lion-san
We had a good time at the travel dinner. The snack grandma made for us was really good. Nancy-san and Joe-san said they were glad to help and see all the people that came. It was too bad all those branches came down. At least you were able to help. We think spring is finally coming. Beside the pussy willow branch that came down at Sodus the temperature still is going up and we have snow drop flowers blooming.