Pumpkins in the sun.

We're now no longer snowy, just a bit chilly. I took the kids on a bike ride yesterday morning after the usual scouting for mittens and warm pants. It was beautiful - hawks were circling, the leaves are changing, and even though it was cloudy, it was so good to be outside. Then in the afternoon we carved their pumpkins, the preparation for which has involved a lot of drawing and re-drawing the ideal jack o' lantern faces. Grace stuck with her plan, while Peter had several possible designs and then improvised a new one on the spot. I just drew a face - I think it looks a lot like last year's, although I haven't gone back to verify this. The sun came out in time for some pictures of kids and pumpkins on the porch.

Today no one wanted to go on another bike ride with me, so I had an hour outside to myself on a gorgeous, 60 degree day. Cycling is easier on my knee than running, plus it's much, much faster so I got to see a good bit of my usual trail without working very hard at all. Next weekend I'll see if I can coax Grace to ride to a nearby lake with me; if we met Mike and Peter there we could all bike around the lake a bit and then Mike and the kids could drive home.

Our other weekend fun (really) was harvesting the last of our carrots. The kids were thrilled, the adults realized that teensy carrots are what you get if you plant midway through the season, but we kept at it. They were tasty, and we left the smallest ones for the resident bunny rabbit. We finally got around to some transplanting, too - I think some of our hostas are a good 20 years old and were sorely in need of attention. We relocated some unhappy ones, divided some of the huge ones, and filled in some spaces in the bed in our front yard that were bare. I moved a hydrangia that wasn't getting as much air circulation as it needed to another part of the front yard, which is filling out nicely. I still need to find a new home for one sad peony, and in a perfect world I'd also have time to shift a bunch of purple coneflower from the shady part of the backyard to the sunny part of the front yard, but you do what you can. Next weekend we'll put in our tulip bulbs, and maybe a few other things if we're inclined. I'm excited for spring already, making mental notes about which vegetables we're going to start inside, which ones we'll just plant outside from seed, and where I'm going to put the lettuce this time (in a little bed under the stairs that's mostly sheltered from the sun.) If only each week had one more day.