Greetings from cold virus central!

I had thought we made it through with relative ease, but then either we had a second virus hit right away, or this cold had a nasty one-two punch. This second wind has been much, much worse. With Maddie nannying for a friend’s family, we seem to be passing our germs back and forth between the households (sorry, Lisa!).

Today I’m directing school activities from the couch, under a wool blanket.

Oona has finished most of her reading and is knitting. Emily will draw out her reading assignment for as long as possible while she cuddles various kitties. Neve is handling the home-ec portion by cleaning the kitchen and taking out the garbage (you know she’s desperate to escape another day of schoolwork when she volunteers for dish and garbage duty). They’re all feeling just a bit salty that they didn’t get a buttload of snow days like their public school counterparts did.

Hey, algebra waits for no man.

Also, Happy Groundhog Day!  We’ll be watching the Bill Murray movie after schoolwork has been completed and Oona has made us popcorn.

We’ve also been talking a lot about weather; it’s warmed up quite a bit, and we had rain yesterday. With the smell of fresh, green earth in the air we all felt ready for spring. It’s a cruel joke, of course. There’s still plenty of time left for winter to hit us with more snow or polar air. Still, a couch-bound girl can dream, and spend time looking at seed catalogs and planning out the 2016 gardens, right?

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this year’s gardens, and farm work. We didn’t breed, so there won’t be any lambs or kids this spring, but that’s okay. We wanted to focus on getting our current flock healthy and fat, and repairing fences and outsmarting our escapee dogs and goats.

We ARE expecting a shipment of chicks sometime later in the spring, since our current hen situation is lacking; we have maybe 15 hens, and a few of them are getting on in years.

Not only will we be adding to our chicken flock then, but we will also be ordering more bees. My hive seems to have absconded sometime since Christmas. There’s a complete lack of any bee in there, not even dead ones. There is one potentially erupted queen cell, but it’s hard to tell.  I HAVE noticed honeybees flying around the last few days, however. They are going into the old hive and stealing honey from the stores that were there. I only ever see maybe 8 or 10, but I’m hoping that means that my absconded colony found a good home to overwinter.

There’s also these lovelies that recently arrived. When I’m feeling better I’ll be in the kitchen whipping up some of her yummy recipes. The challenge is choosing one to start with! (well, actually, the challenge is not eating 10,000 calories worth of baked goods every day).

And, since I’m unable to manage much else, I’ve of course been working on my sweater.  I finally got to the point where I put my sleeve stitches on a holder and I’m working on the lower body. I’m really pleased with how it’s going.

Now let’s all keep our fingers crossed that today is my last day of feeling like garbage; Emily gets her braces on tomorrow!