The world awakens.
This week we had some veritable lovely weather. I apologize if the studio, emails, shopping and else got abandoned expedited and I turned my eyes to the world outside. Rugs had to be beaten and washed, curtains brought down to say good-bye to the cozy spider dwellings, snow-pants and heavy mittens washed and stored (while reviewing wether the legs and hands of these kids would fit into them the next season), laundry aired (including pre-washing lots of lovely fabrics received in recent weeks), and rake in hand nothing was safe.
We paid a visit to a local patch of forest and we were surprised to see so many of last year's ferns still green and rather supple. The leaf cover protected them all winter and we were able to check where the patches would sprung out again this Spring. A bit sadden to find that only 'wood fern' and 'christmas fern' is growing in the particular area we visited. We were hoping to find some of the edible ones to wait for those fiddleheads to pop up. Oh well, there were many other surprises that day.
My little ladies know that I have a predilection for fungi, so they scream and point whenever they find some growing. I have to obviously inspect everything, and then we all continue our journey. They like 'hair-cap moss' (Polytrichum commune) so we also stopped every time they found some, which is everywhere. We were on the hunt for spruce, fir, pine and cedar. I knew we would be able to point them out easily, and I am proud to say that the girls are able to identify these four trees 90% of the time. Telling the difference between spruce and fir is now much easier to them, and pine and cedar are so distinct that they are "the easy ones Mom!".
We stopped and listened to the woodpeckers on many occasions. They seemed to be very active that day. The girls picked the preserved ferns to bring to Dad (his favourite plant). We inspected the terrain for some future bike rides (the previous day we brought our bikes to a different patch of forest and found it too muddy and hard to ride in), and they checked the state of the large meadow where we harvested clover last summer. They asked me if we could come each week to notice how Copeland wakes up and smiling to myself I agreed: nothing I would love more.
I hope you enjoyed our little visit to the forest. I promise to be a good doll maker and bring you Saoirse and Séoirse this weekend. The two little ones are growing antsy and the must find a home of their own. Soon I promise.
