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We celebrated a rainy Mother’s Day by giving Jen breakfast in bed. Saturday was a lovely day, and we saw many signs of spring. We managed to forage over a pound of morels, enabling us to reprise our homemade fettuccine, asparagus, and morel dinner.

Jen couldn’t wait to get into the woods to see if we could find some early morels.

We were rewarded! On Saturday, while Sarah had dinner and a movie (Avengers) with the Lawson twins, Jen and I made homemade fettuccine with sautéed morels, garden asparagus, Mike Heffernan’s garlic, and chopped parsley.

On Saturday Daisy went in the pond for the first time this season. It looked chilly to us, but she seemed happy to be there.

Daisy celebrated her sixth birthday on Saturday. Here is the birthday girl enjoying some fine early spring weather.

Daisy has been in an exceedingly good mood lately. On Friday she proved she could still fit in Jen’s lap.

On Saturday Sarah participated in a Breyer horse show in Millbrook. Here you can see the very serious judges for the dressage event, in which Sarah eventually won a blue ribbon.

We spent Friday night in the city, having dinner at Palm Too with the Zieselmans to celebrate Sarah’s 15th birthday. In Rhinebeck, it was cold and wet, like Daisy’s nose.

A thin crust on the snow kept Daisy topside, although she did slide a bit.

This pine tree, always bare on one side, wasn’t much of a looker. Indeed, when we moved in eleven years ago, Al Wolcott thought it so ugly he said we ought to cut it down. The tree has saved us the trouble — as well as the trouble of cutting down the Norway maple it crushed on the way down.

Sarah celebrated her 15th birthday with a riding lesson, lunch with the Lawson twins, and a fantastic cake baked by Jen.

As is customary, Sarah could select any cake she wanted. Jen made a three layer vanilla cake with chopped Oreos in the batter, crushed Oreo buttercream frosting, and chocolate ganache.

It was icy cold on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but we had a had a warm weekend with a visit from David Upson and his family. Many kitchen gadgets were pressed into service: we made Chicken Adobe in the somehow back-from-the-dead Instant Pot, a perfect 136 degree beef tenderloin courtesy of the sous vide machine Julie and Stacey gave us for xmas, and overnight waffles from the Toastmaster. We also whipped up some spinach and ricotta stuffed shells using nothing fancier than a pyrex casserole.

The Upsons brought their Yorkiepoo, Pepper, here seen climbing Burger Hill. Daisy was a model hostess to Pepper.