Mostly it still looks like Winter, but there are these little hints of things to come. Daffodils are showing up, crocuses are everywhere. A few of the early magnolias are showing off. I'm expecting to see the first few dandelions any minute. The spring peepers are singing in farm ponds and marshes.
We're ramping up for Rosie's wedding now. Because Rosie and Lee have been doing the bulk of the work on planning, our jobs have mostly been about getting ourselves dressed, shod, and prepared. I tried to find some hand-stitched shoes online, but they were predictably too narrow for my flipper feet, so I had to go to an actual shoe store. It worked, and I didn't get killed in the parking lot (pretty close, though), so we can check that one off the list.
Liz is away, so it's just me and the dog, and it's hard to say which of us is more obsessed with getting away from the same old neighborhood scene. Today we took a road trip to the Hoosier National Forest (who knew Indiana had a National Forest?), about an hour's drive, and checked out the Hemlock Cliffs. Sounds like a great spot for suicide, but really it's a very pretty canyon with caves, waterfalls, and ferns. There are posted warnings about exposure and falling to your death, but anyone who's been out west will not find the landscape intimidating. It's not even that slimy (a surprise in this very wet season).
Pretty sweet stuff for these parts. I'm not sure how that cairn is put together. It's impressive, though, and rebar seems unlikely in that location. It has a shrine-like quality that argues against dissection. I restrained myself. And I did not investigate further, as Sunny was interested in other things of the olfactory variety. Southern Indiana has many amazing stories, and I hope we'll get a chance to investigate some more of them.
