I was waiting for weeks looking for our first robin and a few weeks ago I finally saw one! The kids and I painted/sketched/colored robins and I had a little party for us. We had our yearly picnic outside. This year I also did something different: I bought some fresh flowers as a way to welcome Spring in. I brought the flowers up to my bedside at night so that I could see them first thing in the morning and then brought them down to the kitchen during the day. After what felt like a long winter they were such a bright spot! Steve snuck over to my bedside while I was sleeping and opened the windows, (it was too cold to have them open all night). The birds have all returned and he knew that I would want to hear them in the morning. So I woke up under layers of warm covers, with crisp air coming through the window bringing with it a chorus of birds (cardinal, robin, and mourning doves) and there was also the beautiful stripes of light falling on the flowers. The sheets had been hung on the line earlier and smelled wonderful, so all my senses were really happy. The days I took these photos were beautiful, warm, early Spring days and the boys had no school. We spent an ENTIRE day outside. Eti wanted an apple because he wants a garden so badly. After he finished it he buried the core and checked on it every few mins to see if it had started to grow yet. 
One of the other things I did to celebrate the first robin was to cut little strips of material to use in their nests. I did this when Jeff was a little baby. The birds came and took little strings and ribbon and bits of cloth from our back porch and where we had hung some from them in the trees. The following year they did not come back to that nest so when we moved I took the nest that still had little bits of ribbon woven into it. The material I used this time was little bits of cloth that I had used in projects and was now too small to use for anything else. Coco helped me cut them up, as well as some ribbon. We wrote lines of poetry on tiny strips of paper, because how cool would that be to find a nest with bits of poetry woven into it?!
Here is our Robin cake this year. I found a recipe for a chai-flavored cake which tasted like a basic spice cake and then poured a lemon glaze over the top. Lemon glaze 1/3 c. lemon juice 2 cup confectioner's sugar 2 T butter 1 T water Whisk together, poke holes in the cake and then pour over. 
My morning view. 
The second book on my bedside is a poetry handbook by Mary Oliver. Even though it was a handbook it read at times like poetry. "Invention hovers always a little above the rules" "The poem is not a discussion, not a lecture, but an instance - an instance of attention, or noticing something in the world." "You find that most poems are gatherings of words, in good order, in simple order, plain and appealing." 
"With a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration." -(John Keats quoted in Mary Oliver's handbook) "..the first few draws of the long oars through the deep water tell a lot - is one safe, or is one apt to be soon drowned? A poem is that real a journey. Its felt, reliable rhythms can invite, or can dissuade." 
"It does not take much, but it takes a sure eye and a capable hand to be forever noticing and writing down particulars." "The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely... If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers - has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way." 
"I like to say that I write poems for a stranger who will be born in some distant country hundreds of years from now.-Not MY poem, if its well done, but a deeply breathing, bounding, self sufficient poem. Like a traveler in an uncertain land, it needs to carry with it all that it must have to sustain its own life-and not a lot of extra weight either." "A poem on the page speaks to the listening mind." 
"The natural world (nature) is the old river that runs through everything, and I think poets will forever fish along its shores." 
Some friends of ours came to visit--it was so good to see these two sisters, Mandy and Liz. Mandy with her beautiful new baby and Liz with her thought-provoking questions. They feel in many ways like younger sisters to me. 
Liz | 
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