You all know my sister, Meredith, right? She blogs at Mereknits and she is an amazing knitter, crocheter and crafter besides all that other stuff: mom, wife, occupational therapist, wonderful person. She is my sister and she is my friend and we are very, very close. So, the other day, I opened the front door and there was a box on the front steps. It was from Mer. Hmmm.

I opened it up and this is what I saw:

Isn’t it beautiful? It was for me!

I had been just about to leave the house to run some errands, so I quickly tried it on (it fit!) and took a photo of myself in the bathroom mirror with my phone and sent it to her. (I will not share that photo with you, my friends, as the mirror had not been cleaned and you can see the toilet in the background.) I ended up wearing it that day because I love it so much! There’s a story to this sweater: Mer wrote a post about it called “Can a Sweater Knit Itself?” Go over there and read it. She tells it much better than I could.

It fits like a glove and when I showed it to Don via Skype he said “Va Va Voom!” Thank you, sister!

Yesterday, I started the long project that is the Clean Up of the Garden and Yard. Oh my. It was windy out there and I, of course, did too much. But it felt good being outdoors, raking up the seemingly endless amounts of leaves and twigs that are covering the garden beds. It’s been a long, cold winter here in the northeast, but plants are coming up here and there.

Sedum Autumn Joy – always one of the first plants to peek through the soil

Daffodils. Will I see them bloom before I leave? I don’t think so.

As I was raking, I saw the hint of a green shoot poking through the leaves in a section of the garden bed where I didn’t have anything planted. After I removed the leaves, I saw this:

Four Five plants. What the heck?

Then I remembered something from last year. I added that new garden bed to the other side of the house. It had previously been grassy there. I was digging in a section of the bed, getting the soil ready to add a new plant, and I found some bulbs rather far down in the soil. I had no idea how long they had been there or what the heck they were, but I took them over to the big garden bed and planted them, thinking what did I have to lose? And promptly forgot about them.

A little yellow due to lack of sun (they were completely covered by the leaves) but they look like Hyacinths to me. What a wonderful surprise! When I took them out of the other garden bed, I noticed that the bulbs were not pointed in the right direction, so I made sure to do that when I replanted them. I have no idea how long it has been since these bulbs have bloomed, if ever. We’ve lived here almost 8 years and the guy who lived here before us did absolutely nothing to the property (he was a weekender) and he lived here for four years.

These are the little garden miracles that make me so, so happy.

Temperatures are supposed to be in the sixties this week! Positively balmy for our part of the country. Don is on his way home, just got an email from him – he’s waiting for his connection in Zurich. He won’t get home until late this evening. Scout and I are very excited, indeed!

Happy Monday.