The Edges of Spring

These pictures were taken in late March last year on the ponds and puddles at the fish hatchery.  I'm showing them to you so that you will know that it was just as cold and frozen at this exact time last year, and also because I'm hoping that if winter thinks we've paid enough attention to her beauty, she might feel better about moving on. 

I'm back on the mainland and will be here until Easter.  I'm sanding the teak on our sailboat (the Hans Christian, the SV Grace).  Sad to say, she's on the market.  We're trading into a grandparent boat, a trawler where our grandchildren and nieces and nephews can come and swim off the back and where we can sit in the shade.  In any case, I'll be sanding almost every day that it's not raining. 

I've been working night and day on my e-book, and now I'm showing it to all the little kids I know.  Then, I've just got to work out ISBN numbers and upload it into the correct formats for Kindles and iPads and other devices, and then it will be ready to go.  (Just in time.  It's a book about snow.)  It's good, after such intensity, to be on the boat and think of nothing but the motion of scraping and sanding all that beautiful wood. 

The urge to work on teak trim (or "bright work" as they say,) has come upon me, but it doesn't come upon me often enough.  If it did, I wouldn't have so much to do right now.  It's a nice time at the marina however, not too many people, so that Molly and Wilson can hang out on the dock with me, and once or twice a day someone can come by and talk, first to Wilson and Molly, and then to me. 

So Bill and I have finally admitted that we are not going to cross the Pacific Ocean in our sailboat.  We're going to stay a little closer to home and family and it's lucky that there is quite a lot to see right here.