The Essence of Spring -

 There is a particular "fragrance" about spring in the Pacific NW.  It's called Cottonwood.  Sweet, slightly musky, not really a fragrance you would necessarily wear, but it's oh, so enticing. 

More than any other, the smell of cottonwood really signifies spring to me.  And it reminds me of a walk in the woods, ostensibly to look for mushrooms, with a crush from one of my Soc/Anthro classes. 

Ah, spring fever. 

This little hawthorn is over 60 or 70 years old.  It was gifted to The Shepherd by a lady from our church who was dying of cancer.  She said she  knew he would take good care of it. 

And he has. 

I don't work at the salt mine on Friday.  It "used to be" my day off - Today we had Dr's appointments and hair appointments  - got groceries and took the wool over to our friends house for the Wonderful Woollies Wool sale that is happening tomorrow.  It is our 5th year of participating in this sale - of course I'll take pictures.  

Someone I know is pretty pooped out tonight.  Hopefully he'll take it easy tomorrow.

I hope you've enjoyed this little tour through The Shepherd's bonsai garden.

I have to finish getting things ready to take along tomorrow - we have a pot luck lunch for the people who are "selling" - I think there are about 10 farms involved.  I'm taking a chopped salad with chicken & sunflower seeds, plus some banana bread that I just baked up.  I finally found THE quintessential banana bread recipe - on Pinterest of course.  I'll get you the recipe here in the next week or so. 

Til then - have a great weekend! 





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