Boston's had crummy weather this spring, to put it mildly, with freezing temperatures and tons of rain. So when Ben and Jerry's free cone day coincided with a pleasant, only mildly cool and extremely windy evening, and we also happened to replace our aging and now broken digital camera with a new one, we seized the moment, ventured outside, ate ice cream and took pictures. Robert and Sarah look very happy in this picture. I actually think Sarah is eating my ice cream cone, which she liked more than I did, but the real point of note here is the wind that is making their hair do interesting things. Needless to say, it started pouring soon after this picture was taken.

On another shockingly sunny and pleasant--though still not actually springlike--April day, Sarah and I and Kim Hyde and Sue, and others, ventured out to Ruthie's bridal shower. The room was beautifully set up, and everything was lovely. Ruthie looked quite the princess as she opened gifts under a Chinese parasol. Sue, Sarah,and I pose near the end of lunch at our table. After the shower, Sarah and I met up with Debbie and Robert and headed north to Costco to buy lots and lots of things. Debbie (pictured in her trusty nameless car) kept Robert distracted--er, entertained--while Sarah and I shopped, and then we loaded everything in her car for the trip home. We managed to keep the fun going awhile longer, though, as we then met up with Bob for supper and hung out all evening long. Debbie spent the night, and Sunday morning she and I met Sarah for church. After church, and the unloading of the final batch of Costco supplies, we wandered over to the Public Gardens for a picnic.

I suffered through the picnic, putting up with the grass and the outdoors and the nature of it all, and after lunch Chris and I sat on a bench and worked on a Bible study for our group for a few weeks from now. Since it was so sunny, and the Gardens was filled with people enjoying the afternoon, e were entertained by a near-bloody battle of tiny, fierce dogs. Upon leaving our bench and walking toward the T, we encountered what looked like a very large dog, or, more accurately, a bear lying in the shade of a tree. The mother and three daughters pictured were just some of the people who gawked at the bear, with parents usually warning their children not to get too close. Chris moved in, though, hands up to instruct the children that they were never to do what he was about to do--touch a strange dog or bear in a park--and gingerly poked at the creature, thereby revealing it to be a large mangy fur rug or blanket. Bizarre, and everyone was more than slightly disappointed, I think, that it wasn't really a bear after all. Boston is so strange, sometimes, that I almost don't miss New York at all.

Verrill Farm's Asparagus Festival