Rain, Soot, and Daffodils

It's raining hard today, but there are signs of Spring. Yesterday, I bought these daffodils for only 1.50 a bunch. I love the time in Spring when the grocery stores are filled with cheap daffs. Every year I signify my faith that Spring will actually come in the small private celebration of buying lots of daffodils.

I arrived home with them to discover we'd had a minor catastrophe with the pellet stove and had soot all over everything. Yes, 'everything' includes the newly painted walls and woodwork. It was odd because you couldn't see it, but if you ran your fingers over anything they came up black. And if you tried to just brush it away, there were terrible streaks. So, after consulting the internet about cleaning products, we washed walls, woodwork, floors using a lot of windex and swiffer sheets. We put everything we could in the dishwasher or washing machine and vacuumed what we couldn't. It's mostly gone today and the house is sparkling. Looking at the bright side, this way, the COG helped me wash down woodwork etc. So that was good.

I'm reading, the COG is on his computer doing I don't know what. The only excitement has been a lovely big hawk in a tree just across the street only 8 feet or so from the ground. Our different reactions to the hawk illustrated the differences between us. I ran for the Sibley Bird Book and binoculars, to try to identify it. The COG ran for his camera to try to capture it on film.