“No, Claire. Squirrels don’t eat people.”

“You can’t eat that, Claire. It’s KRYPTONITE!”

“Mommy, Dad’s going to kill slugs with a sword.”

“Mommy, why are you wearing a plate on your head?”

I blocked the beret on a dinner plate, so perhaps it still retained that shape when I first put it on my head–before I arranged it in the fetching style you see here–or maybe it will always look like a dinner plate and I’m just in denial. Better that than a shower cap, I suppose.

(Tweed Beret, by Kristen Tendyke for Interweave Knits, Winter 2006. Knit using Takhi Donegal Tweed. I topped it off with a bobble instead of the TV antennas in the original.)

Yesterday started out fairly relaxed. I sipped some wonderful coffee Robert made in the french press, finished off the front of Frieda (my pink cabled pullover), prepared soup in the crock pot, wrapped presents and made some tissue paper and pipe cleaner butterflies to hang around the house during Claire’s birthday party next Saturday.

But then…I looked out onto the back porch and noticed the pine needles that had piled up after all of our wind storms this winter. I stepped outside, the clouds parted and sun filtered through the branches overhead. A soft breeze tickled my cheeks and birds began to sing. That did it. Spring fever hit me in spades.

I swept the deck clean, raked the front yard, put out the garden furniture, pulled some weeds and then hauled my son off to the nursery, where we picked out a dozen primroses (darn slugs have already started chomping on them!), and a couple dozen daffodils and tulips. We also found a wonderful ground cover bearing pretty periwinkle flowers. The two of us hauled all of that back home and set to planting it all.

After that, I headed off to the grocery store to take care of the week’s shopping and to stock up on supplies for the party. While there, I ended up tossing a new bedspread and storage unit for Claire’s room into the cart.

I drove home, put the groceries away, helped dress the kids after their bath, sat down to eat a late dinner and then made a beeline back to the garage to build Claire’s new shelf. When that was done, I set it up in her room and filled it up with her toys that always seem to be underfoot.

I then collapsed into a chair in the living room and watched the movie Robert put on…whatever that might have been. I was too exhausted to pay it much attention

I didn’t manage to bake the cake and cupcakes or prune the roses as I had planned. And while I took tons of photos of all my accomplishments this weekend, my card reader is broken and the camera cable is missing, so I’m stuck with old photos until I work out a solution. I’m going to go nap with my eyes open now

Between the nasty weather and one cold after another, I’ve been falling behind on so many things. If I want my garden to look like this again this summer, I need to get busy:

It’s time to start my tomatoes, prune the rose bushes and do a ton of weeding! Our lawn is also in dire shape due to a lot of moss and some invasive weeds. I’m not sure how to get a handle on that, so I will have to consult some experts.

I didn’t get a chance to plant my peas (around here, they are supposed to be in the ground by President’s Day). In my defense, I’ve had one nasty cold after another for a month now. It’s time to get healthy!

My workouts have become less frequent as well. Again, I’m blaming the colds, but I hope to get back on track soon. I’ve signed up for some yoga classes that I’m really looking forward to. The most exciting one is the first part of a workshop with Ingela Abbot, one of two senior Iyengar teachers in the Pacific Northwest. She’s supposed to be an outstanding teacher. I can hardly wait!

And if all that weren’t enough to try to squeeze in, I’ve started planning a birthday party for my daughter who is turning three on the 21st. I’ve sent out the invitations, and decided on a theme, but still have to go shopping for presents and plan some activities. I think I’ll be baking a butterfly cake like this one:

It looks a bit easier than the cakes I’ve made in the past (remember the Superman cake that took me four hours to decorate), but pretty enough that I won’t feel like I’m disappointing anyone (I’ve tried store-bought cakes and just don’t like the way they taste. There’s way too much shortening in the frosting. Ick!).

Oh, and there’s going to be an end-of-season party that evening for my son’s basketball team and his cousins will be spending the night.

If only there were more hours in the day!