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I celebrated Father’s Day by washing the car, in dadlike fashion, while Daisy looked on supportively.

Sarah celebrated by winning an armful of ribbons aboard Owen at Southlands.

The field looked spiffy after Del Wolcott mowed it for parking at the Landsman Kill Trail Association’s Spring Trail Ride, which took off from our farm on Sunday.  We left early for Sarah’s American Youth Dance Recital at Hunter College.

Here is Sarah looking spiffy in a Colgate sweatshirt standing between two locust trees.

Also spiffy, and also enjoying a locust tree, are these two pileated woodpeckers.  We’d never before seen a pair of them.

Today we watched the Memorial Day parade, which each year marches out of a Norman Rockwell picture and makes a right on East Market Street.  Jen’s parents and sister visited for the weekend.

Jen and Lew chatted on Guy and Maya’s porch.

There seem to be more fire trucks every year.

We had drinks on our back porch Saturday evening.

When we arrived on Friday, a heron was circling the pond.

Jen returned from a writer’s retreat this morning, just in time for a Mother’s Day brunch at Le Petit Bistro.  This afternoon, Jen and Sarah met horses and riders visiting our trails, including Rich Contini, past president of the Landsman Kill Trail Association.  Sarah has in fact ridden this horse before.

We had a chilly weekend, even making a fire on Saturday.

Before leaving, Jen and I hunted, successfully, for morels.  Back in New York we sautéed them in butter, added salt and pepper, tossed them with spaghetti, and topped them with grated parmesan.  They were sublime!

We had many late-breaking signs of spring this weekend, including the redbud in bloom, the first flowers of the dogwoods, and Daisy in the pond.  Still no morels, though.

We are patiently waiting for spring.  It’s been cold and wet, like Daisy’s nose.

We found this wild turkey egg while looking, without success, for morels in the woods.  Maybe next weekend!

Sarah woke up early Saturday morning and let us know that we had a pair of swans in the pond.  The duck between them doesn’t seem too happy about it, but they are quite picturesque and we are glad to have them.  They stuck around all weekend.

I looked it up online, and swans, it turns out, are a valuable amenity.  $2,700/pair, delivered.

The real reason Sarah was up early Saturday morning was because she had her first riding show of the season, at Welwyn Stables.  Here she is aboard Owen.

They won a blue ribbon!

We spent Friday night in New York to see a play (Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”), and drove up to the farm Saturday morning in time for Sarah’s riding lesson.  We had a lovely sunset Saturday evening, as we made rigatoni in the stand mixer.

Today, as April entered its second week, it snowed just a little bit.

We don’t offer many pictures of the trip up to the farm, which is usually taken at night.  This weekend we sat out a Friday night storm and drove up in the morning.

Our evergreens fared poorly in the high winds.

Today we left blue skies competing with glowering clouds.  Between Sarah’s exams and spring break, we probably won’t be back until next month.

I suppose it’s a sign of the coming spring, but I was not happy to find two Canada geese on the pond Saturday.  For their part, they probably weren’t too happy about the curling and hockey results at the Olympics.

Daisy relaxed after to helping to shoo the geese.