My Friend B

My friend B is a special friend indeed. Yesterday she sent me a cheery message about snow and winter with a wonderful picture of her little snowman. She built this on the railing of her deck in the back garden. He's only a foot tall. She made his arms from the seed pods on her Siberian iris, his smile from peppercorns and his eyes from allspice. I think I see a baby carrot for a nose. Isn't he adorable? And this before she left for work. She starts work a little later and gets more done in a morning than most people do in a week (in my lazy opinion anyway). One of her (lucky) colleagues mentioned once how he loved sticky toffee pudding. She surprised her workmates shortly after one morning with a fresh-made batch. Anyway, with my cold and another fall of snow, I was trying hard to stay in the winter spirit. This snowman, with his sweet expression helped. THEN... when I got home I found the new issue of Martha Stewart Living in my mailbox. One of B's Christmas presents to me was a subscription. And this issue is all about spring with a beautiful arrangement of tulips in a pussywillow basket on the cover. I felt warm just flipping through the pages. Thank you B! xx Speaking of Martha Stewart, I was on her website today, linked from an email I received about Easter treats. And what do you think they had? A Guinness ice-cream float! Guinness and vanilla ice-cream. I might eschew the classic Easter dessert this year and just go for this. Hee hee.

Speaking of snowmen, each Christmas season, the day I put up the tree, I always celebrate the conclusion of it by watching the short animated film of Raymond Briggs' The Snowman (1982). You may know this, but if you don't it's worth catching, especially in the winter. A very sweet tale. I think there are subsequent versions of it (one narrated by David Bowie) but I've only ever seen the 1982 version and there is no voice-over, just the singing of a choir boy during the flying sequence. No more spoilers from me!