Happy belated St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

Your scribe is late.  Very late, but I’ve had a hellishly-busy two weeks and alas have had little time to catch up.  We have managed to keep up with the festivities though, and St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated by these veggies at Toad Hall, and we managed to pull off a lovely feast.  T conjured up a hearty vegetable pie, replete with an incredibly flaky crust.  We made cabbage soup and it was so delish that even Kman finished his.  It was the first time I think that he’d eaten cabbage that wasn’t in a borscht or a cole slaw.  The mashed potatoes were served with a divot for butter which still makes me blush at the memory of how good it was and how we abandoned our white-food prohibition.  Our beverage of choice was Guinness, of course, and we ate to the graceful tones of the Pogues. Slainte!

It was the tail end of the March break and it was the first spring week for us at Toad Hall. For me it was broken up by a sojourn into Toronto to catch the Cowboy Junkies at Glenn Gould Studio, thanks to the birthday gift of a ticket from the Delightful Ms. S (what a show!), but it was so nice to hang out there for a week, playing board games and finally finishing my first Ravensburger 1000 piece puzzle.

Another first for us was that we brought the cats with us and they just loved it.  There are windows everywhere, some floor to ceiling so that the kitties could sit and chatter as they stared at the birds eating at the feeders, not three feet away but safely on the other side of the sliding glass doors.  I know that some of you would say that we should let them out to run around to see what Mother Nature has to offer them; I say no way.  We made the mistake of letting one of our former cats out when we lived in Harrowsmith (Vlad the Impaler was his name, and he lived up to it). He brought home countless little baby animals (dead ones) and we’re not in the mood to repeat that carnage.  Our sweet Stella the tortoiseshell is pretty laid back but when Scout the Siamese was a little baby Stella brought her a mouse, still alive, so that Scout could rip it to shreds. She did before we could save it. We are the owners of a killer-Siamese, and therefore she shall forever stay INDOORS. She can chatter all she wants inside the cottage at the red squirrels, the chickadees, woodpeckers, blue jays, nuthatches and chipmunks, but inside she stays for the sake of all animal-kind.