Appreciate with your children the wonder of making it through a cold winter and the effort that lies ahead in their preparations for the next one. Drive by Rowena and look to the hills, try to spy the mountain goats that live there. Daffodils, grape hyacinth, tulips they are already fading but will return again next spring, because that is the way of things. Now this tree has buds, now leaves. Notice those ferns growing in the shade and admire the moss in cool, damp places, so pretty on rocks, filling in the vertical slopes of north facing stairs.
Sunny hillsides shine with balsam root and purple spikes of lupine reach to the sky.
Discover the little flowers growing through gravel, they are true survivors, pick a name for them. It s a great day for digging. It s so tiny, but so strong. The earth is big, really big. Half way around the earth there are mountains three times as high.