Spring fever has hit.  I asked Tyler to help me clear away some tangles in my back yard to bring in more sunlight.  The next thing I knew, we'd cleared an old dead tree and trimmed back the big Joshua plan that has been lunging out toward freedom for ten years.  Gone!

Now I have more a more open area up to the back fence, and my Buddha sits peacefully on his rock pedestal, anchoring my garden.

I'm growing 4 pepper plants.  I am always mad for grilling peppers.  They are so delicious.

A couple of days ago I had Anders over for two hours.  He immediately goes to my craft drawer and picked out the old Amazon.com cardboard insert I had saved for a project.  When he held it up to his face and chest, it looked like some kind of body armour, so we went with that idea.

I cut out a slit for his eyes (complete with a flap to close down under attack) and we put green paper on the chest, and inserted pipe cleaner "antenna" and "alien sensors" . He always knows exactly what he wants--such certainty at the age of 5!  So I had to rummage around for some old Velcro strips to make a fastener on the back of the mask.  It turned out perfect!

It's so relaxing to make a project and not have any plan, but be in the moment with the stuff you have in front of you.  Make it work.  It's so much fun.  Costs almost nothing.  Save those cardboard inserts if you have kids around.  They know what to do with them.

Eliza, Ander's mom, and my daughter-in-law is giving a talk at her college class today on the benefits individually and globabally of  eating and buying local food.  I'm so proud of her! She's started buying only organic produce from local farms and avoiding imported foods and produce.