On Easter afternoon, we went to my cousin Eva’s (via IKEA where I got some new pans and, after 25 years of good service from the old one, a new duvet) for a few days.

Eva came home from an Easter dinner with some lamb. We carved the meat off the leg bone, put it in a pot with to make some stock, and Chico got the shoulder blade. He scraped off all the meat, ate the cartilage, and gnawed at the hard part for an hour.

It’s much more spring like down that way, with the daffodils well into bloom, day lilies several inches high, peonies showing sprouts. The staff and their dogs are around during the day in a way that they are not in the dead of winter, but the real summer crush has not yet started. There’s always been a mouse battle, what with all the seeds and tender young starts. This winter a lovely kitty adopted them. They had her spayed, and she lives in greenhouse #7, the heated one, and pays them back five times over with the number of rodents she catches.

Something is moving somewhere behind the cottage, it has him in full-alert position.

The day it didn’t rain, we took a walk at Gooseberry Island, a place I never tire of taking Chico.

Instead of starting out on the beach this time, we took the high ground, center of the island, path to see if the Japanese knotweed had started to push up stalks. They’re tender and delicious in the spring. Eva eats them, and probably sells them to restaurants for lots of money if she can get enough of them. They were not doing anything yet.

He doesn’t know it, but I invite Chico up onto objects as a way to add conditioning to his walks.

Such a photogenic guy.

I was very mixed up by the tide table I read, I was sure we were going to the beach at high tide, but if it was high tide, it was a negative high tide.

The water was no where near the high tide mark.

Chico decided to play a little Find Momo – which is a wonderful book.

Where’s Chico in this picture?

I can’t remember a time when I was not fascinated by what the ocean delivers to the coast. I could walk for hours on the beach, looking at what’s right by my feet.

This rock looks very different from two different angles.

And sometimes I can lift my eyes enough to look for some perspective.

We love Eva, visiting her, the space she gives us to do our thing or help garden, the staff, the food – it’s always a treat to go there for a few days.