Nothing Day

Wow, a Nothing Day! We haven't had one of these in a long long time. The kind of day with no scheduled activities either at home or away. We cooked, cleaned, did laundry, planted the garden, free-ranged the hens and played Speedminton.

We made a special trip to town at Fiona's request to weigh her on the scale at the clinic and see if she was getting close to booster-seat weight. Alas she's 34 lbs. and has another 6 lbs. to go before we can start thinking about moving her out of her five-point harness carseat. At the rate she's going she'll be a pre-teen before she outgrows her toddler seat. Oh well, she wasn't too disappointed. I pointed out that I can still carry her around on my hip because she's a mere 34 pounds, and she likes that I can do that, so there's a silver lining to being a teeny waif.

On the way home we stopped at the little gift shop on main street that sells hemp clothing, books and art supplies. Right there on the main display shelf was a book that's been on my Amazon wish-list since I first spotted it as a pending release, the 100th anniversary Palazzo edition of The Wind in the Willows lushly illustrated by Robert Ingpen. The illustrations are everything I thought they would be and more. The cloth binding is nice and the paper quality is exceptional. And the vocabulary and turn of phrase are every bit as poetic as I'd remembered. It was the perfect hot spring day to lie in the hammock and read aloud first chapter, about a perfect hot spring day, to my children who were too young to have clear memories of the last time TWITW was read aloud in this family.

More Speedminton was played. The garden was watered. Supper was eaten. (Sophie has laryngitis, so it was a quieter meal than usual.) Instruments were practiced. More laundry was hung. The chickens were chased back into their coop.