Sudden urge knitting, but first, a surprise

 One of my containers, the kind I give baked goods to neighbors in, came back yesterday.  Accompanied by this:

Beautiful arrangement of pansies, which we think will work out of doors, too.  What a treat.  I know the convention of never bringing back a container empty, but this was a five star response.

Then later I succumbed to an attack of mitered knitting. I saw this happening a while back on The Last Homely House East of the Sea youtube channel, the beloved Kate Jackson, and have been fancying trying it, but thought I had no yarn other than what I'd spun and used. Then I found a small stash of commercial yarn I'd probably been given, and thought, aha, here's my chance.

And about eleven o'clock last night, cast on to do this

Finished my first square, then, first thing this morning, still in bathrobe, continued, interested to know how to continue with the second square.  You knit these together, no sewing or crocheting together later.  So you're making the whole throw as you go. And you have to follow the geography of the instructions to get them right way out and right side up.

And here are the first two, the camera angle making them look a bit distorted, but they are squares, honest. And now I have to learn how to attach the third one, to be exact, where, and which way out.  Once my fingers are not so tired.  I'll use up a lot of bits of yarn balls with this.

So, the weather being spring like, I went for a walk, and found a couple of white breasted nuthatches surveying a likely tree, with a nice hole in the side, maybe a nesting site. They were quite undeterred by my scrutiny, so they must be seriously househunting. 

Then a bit further on, down the belt of trees, here are a couple of my favorite, beech trees, with the pale gold leaves which stay all winter, and the lovely shadows on their silver gray bark.

And here are the first of the daffodils further along, part of the masses Handsome Partner, Son and I planted the month after 9.11 as a family memorial for the event and for the many local people, some of them kids in their 20s who worked at the top of the WTC,  who never came home that day.

The oak leaves make a good mulch, and the daffodils push through anyway.  That was a funny day, Handsome Partner wanting to memorialize the event in some peaceful way that signified life, but not able to balance and dig at the same time.  

So he was on his feet still, and we came home with a huge sack of daffodils, including his favorite King Alfreds, which he claimed were the real ones.  He pointed, Son and I dug, and dug, and dug, and finally everything was planted.  Some have been picked over the years by people who don't understand they're cultivated, but that's okay, it gives them pleasure. 

And I do like to see them recur year after year.  When Handsome Partner was dying ten years later,  he asked me to pass on his wishes that people commemorate him the same way: plant daffodils.  And people did, in many countries where they can grow.  It's lovely to think of the gardens, and people probably having no idea at this point how they came to be there and why.  Just enjoying them anyway.  He will be gone ten years in August this year, and the daffodils for everyone are still surviving and blooming.

Now back to figuring out the third mitered square.  Later I get to choose this week's Misfits box contents.  It's all go!