I'm a little on the fence about the colors; I can't decide if it says "spring," or if it says "Easter," which is not exactly what I was going for. Maybe I'll leave this up until Easter and then switch it out for something else.
After the chicks returned, I sent them on a treasure hunt, using these clues:
Do you ever make treasure hunts? I love them. I always accidentally call them "scavenger hunts," but I don't think that's what I mean. I mean the type of hunt during which you read a clue that leads you to the next clue, and so on, until you find the treasure. I set them up for the kids every so often. I secretly have fun writing and hiding the clues, and the chicks, particularly Ninna, really love looking for them. Ninna still very much loves any kind of game that involves hiding and seeking/searching, so a treasure hunt is right up her alley.
When one of the clues sent them over to the kitchen table, Ninna excitedly asked if the new spring tablecloth was the prize. I thought smugly about how appreciative my children are, but then when the next clue sent them to their clothesline, she excitedly asked "oh, did you wash our pajamas?" I try not to laugh out loud at my children unless they're intentionally being funny, but I couldn't hold it in. Are my cleaning skills really that bad that she would get that excited about clean pajamas? I think I'd prefer not to hear the answer.
The treasure was neither a tablecloth nor clean laundry; it was a couple of new spring books I had been saving for this occasion. I put away the winter books from our seasonal book basket and replaced them with the spring ones, which now includes the "treasure" books:
And we planted our ceremonial first seeds:
The traditional planting period in Montreal is the long weekend associated with Victoria Day, which this year is May 21st-23rd. This means that the seeds that need to be started 8-10 weeks before planting day need to be started now, and we can start on some of the 6-8 week ones as well. I still don't have a concrete gardening plan for this year, so we just started with basil (which technically is not an 8-10 week seed) and impatiens from saved seeds, mainly just to get something in the dirt. The leftover bags of soil from last year were frozen solid in the garage, so we had to pick at them with shovels to get enough dirt to fill our (re-used for the third time) seedling containers.How have you ushered in the spring? Are you truly experiencing spring weather, or are you just pretending, like we are?
6 comments:
Oh, I like your bunting--I think it definitely says "spring" (and Easter too, but they kinda go hand-in-hand). We've mentally switched in my house--everyone was quite incensed that I sent them to school in coats and boots and tucked their snowpants in their backpacks, but it was only 23 degrees out!
It's snowing here today! I wanted to plant some seedlings, but since we're going out of town they would just die. So we'll start doing more spring activities once we're back!
The Happy Day by Ruth Krauss is probably a great spring book for Montreal: it's full of snow. :)
Lovely bunting, treasures, and celebrations. I also admire how you change up the books seasonally. Happy Spring to all of you!
thanks for the reminder to switch our books- we too have a seasonal book box (a leftover from my teaching days) and i always forget to change it!
today we planted our seeds- it has been nice in NY except that tonight it is supposed to snow...so we planted about 90 tomato seeds in the hopes that we get some to be hardy enough to go outside...
MaryAnne--it's still fully winter here. The exciting news, however, is that three of our seedlings have popped up. It's giving us some hope that spring might arrive some time in the next two months ;).
Anon--that book looks lovely! I've just added it to our wishlist. We only have one Ruth Krauss book so far, but we love it (The Carrot Seed.)
KJ--Same to you!
Regina--good luck with the tomatoes. I really want to grow some this year, but last year the squirrels ate every single tomato before any of them had a chance to ripen! I might just be too defeated to try that again (not to mention unwilling to make such a huge effort to feed the squirrels ;).
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