hurry spring

on Easter Monday it is still very chilly at frog bog farm, not that the cold water keeps ellie out of the pond.

yesterday the chorus frogs and the wood frogs have been calling and the goldfish have started to be interested in their expensive new "spring and autumn" pellets, imported from germany. they can't digest regular food when the water is below 50F but this fancy stuff offers fine dining when the water is above 39F. i assume it is, but have not yet invested in the appropriate thermometer. the trout lily leaves are up and i've found one spring beauty that is blooming.

on the other hand, the evil alien invasive garlic mustard is very present in several places at the edge of our woods and can be seen all along six mile road, preparing to take over the universe of native wildflowers. if you don't know about garlic mustard, google it. and be very afraid.

i, like many others living in the detroit area, have been feeling quite gloomy of late; a partial reason for not writing on my blog. the straws have been in the wind for some weeks now that GM may go into bankrupcy and Chrysler has two weeks to finalize a deal with Fiat or die. (i'm hoping for Fiat of course--wouldn't it be fun to have one of the new cinquecentos? but will they come back into the American market?) it's all happened so fast that the whole situation seems unbelievable. much of it can be traced back to just plain old greed: make the big suvs and trucks, that's where the big profits were. i keep a little trace of pride in ford, as of course they were such major supporters of the dia in the old days, and they haven't needed bailout money. they seem to me like the real hometown team. i even once brought a vodka and tonic to dodie ford at a ccs party in grosse pointe.

the university of michigan museum of art has opened a new wing and it is very handsome and simple with lots of windows on the ground level, making it literally transparent. i was happy to see that the silver tea and coffee service that we gave in 2002 is on display, albeit in the 'study collection.' this belonged to my great-grandmother mimie chouteau of st. louis and was made by tiffany & co., but as usual with what my father called 'henshaw luck' it dates from about 1885, before the much more interesting and attractive art nouveau style came into fashion. i was very happy to see it there, but it did seem to need a little polishing. mimie's gandfather was charles gratiot, for whom the avenue was named, so you might say there is a michigan connection.

i have picked up auditing corinne painter's philosophy 101 course again, for the next two weeks the topic is the meaning of life. chances are good that there will be no answers but it's hard to say that the topic isn't of interest and the students are very engaged. that's gratifying to see.

jeremy has promised new photos of bennie and tamara, but they haven't arrived yet, so i'll let ellie have the photo honors on this post. apparantly all is well in california and the easter bunny left plenty of eggs for both tamara and bennie, but she scored them all.