Saturday Slight

Good bye, early-morning daylight.  I have enjoyed my morning strolls after chores for the past several days while the sun sits behind the Cabinets, waiting to make its grand entrance.

Good things happen to those who wait.

Now, we'll all have to wait until later each day for that moment.  

Still, it will be good because our focus will be on the moment later each day when the sun calls it a day and dips behind the Selkirks.

I can deal with a little darkness while feeding the horses, knowing that a lot of daylight lies ahead and that soon our routine will involve less and less time indoors and more time tending to the great projects of spring. 

Yup, I'll spring forward happily. 

Of course, I don't know how much help Mother Nature is gonna be in the grand plan of cleaning up the yard and getting the flower and garden beds ready for another year.

That's always the $64,000 question in North Idaho.  So far, nobody's answered it.

I visited with Kim, the director of our Pend Oreille Arts Council,  yesterday who told me she learned early on after moving to this area from Western Washington the basic rule for putting out pots of pretty flowers.

Her friend Judy strongly advised her "Mother's Day," not early April.

Maybe that's in honor of our mothers and to butter up to Mother Nature herself. 

I told Kim that my friend Joy had always said, "Wait until the snow comes off from Baldy Mountain (that's the mountain in yesterday's photo)." 

Whatever the correct answer, we all know that every year we natives are much too anxious to play our luck with healthy baby potted plants and that every year, we kill a lot of them. 

This year I'm certainly going to follow the advice of all my local friends and keep my lovely little red geraniums (pictured above)  inside until I know it's safe to litter the Lovestead with their beauty.  

Yup, there will be about 35 of them if all goes well.  I'm quite pleased so far, even though I've had to reseed a few pots.  

They seem to be quite healthy and happy to be here. 

I can't wait to see the bright reds all over the yard, but then again, being a North Idahoan, I must.  

This morning,  during chore time, the country chorus was belting out its tunes full blast.  Off in Meserve's pond, the Canadian honkers were warming up as if they were about to set foot on the stage of "The Voice." 

Meanwhile, robins in the front yard---yes, they showed up in force this week---were chirping happily, and the perennial sounds of chicadees seemed to be everywhere.  

Amidst it all, dogs were barking.

I think all the critters are as happy to spring forward as the rest of us.

Well, I've got miles to go before I sleep on this lovely Saturday so I'm gonna spring out of this chair and get the show on the road.

One more thing, though, in respect for my friend Ken who reads this blog, I must point out a grave omission in my list of names who put Sandpoint on the map.

This guy is one of Ken's contemporaries, and I just plain should have known better than to leave Green Bay Packers great guard Jerry Kramer off the list.

Ken pointed that out to me yesterday, and I'll mea culpa while mentioning that Jerry was probably the first to bring national prominence to our little community. 

And, I'm sure the list is still incomplete---maybe even forgetting that former Denver Bronco quarterback Jake Plummer lives here too.
And, oops, there's Pulitzer Prize Winner Marilynne Robinson. 

I give up on trying to think of them all.  The bottom line is that there are a lot of famous people who know about Sandpoint.

And, a lot of not so famous who've, for decades, made the town so appealing to these people.  

Happy Saturday.