Hello, April

No foolishness from this lady!

I promise not to utter one negative thought or expletive about Donald Trump all day long. 

Happy April Fool's Day and Happy Birthday to the bijillion peeps who seem to be celebrating birthdays during this past week and next. 

It's definitely difficult at this time of year to remember EVERYONE I know came upon this earth during this time of year. 

Bountiful Birthday time, for sure. 

Anyway, after a productive day of outside projects, including buying a board, cutting the board and nailing the board where another I had destroyed with the tractor loader this winter had been. 

I was quite proud of that achievement.  

To some it's just a board, for someone who can unwittingly can extend a five-minute project into several hours on any given day, my board project yesterday certainly earned a press on the "That WAS Easy" button. 

I don't press that button very often, but I think I shall once this blog post is finished. 

Spring clean-up has begun, and another nice day should provide opportunities to finish several projects, which I hope go as well as yesterday's board installment. 

One of my friends sent me a Facebook item noting that April showers bring dog logs aplenty. 

I immediately responded, telling her that I had pretty much gotten the dog-log pickup project under control, and it wasn't even April yet. 

It's amazing, when the snow vanishes what one can learn about the individual dogs and their preferences for where to build their log decks. 

I had no idea until a couple of weeks ago that Foster, for quite some time, preferred the area out by the satellite dishes.  

That became apparent when the snow melted and I found ring of Foster mini logs covering about 20 feet,  neatly arranged and evenly spaced. 

Later, when I took over morning and evening dog duty during Bill's rehab, little Foster left his business out in the field along the lane. 

Anyway, my dog log piles have been hauled off or thrown in muddy pools around the place to disintegrate. 

Early spring is such a lovely time.  Today I'm hoping to tie the horses to that fence with the new board and give each of their hides a good workout with the rubber curry comes. 

Of course, that will create another project:  haul off the carpets of bay, chestnut and gray hair.

And, of course, I'll be washing my own clothes which will surely have a new coat of horse hair. 

It's dirty work in April but, for the most part, I enjoy it because virtually every day we can see progress as grass greens up, daffodil spears show up and soggy stuff starts turning dry. 

In the meantime, we celebrate birthdays aplenty.  Today is Willie's 42nd, so I included a photo of another memorable birthday when he was 37 and spent the day fishing in Ireland with Bill, compliments of Cousin Patrick.  

I think Willie, the fly fisherman, won't forget that special day in a very special place. 

Last night we met another new best friend at Mick Duffs.

  His name is Norman, and we made friends so fast with Norman that we helped him celebrate his birthday.

Actually, Norman is Emma's dad from Berlin.  He is here for several days to see his daughter and to get acquainted with her host family. 

We had a delightful time.  Emma's friend Anton, an exchange student from Sweden joined us.

The evening was topped off with birthday cake and, of course, a birthday serenade. 

Tomorrow we'll be celebrating Bill's special day which he shares with his sister Margaret.  And, I don't want to overlook my Lily.  

She'll turn 14 tomorrow, and, if she's lucky, her birthday present will be a major winter hair loss. 

All is fun, and maybe I'll be a bit more foolish than first promised.  It all depends on what comes out of that mouth or those tweets. 

Happy April.  Happy Monday.