Western skychair is up

 The boy and the girl came to the Island last weekend, for Mother's Day. Chris brought maple snap cookies, which as he said are not 'snaps' in the sense of gingersnaps, but round soft cookies, rather like the honey cookie from my tiny Evelyne Johnson Cookie Cookbook, but sweetened with maple syrup instead. Good choice for a Mother's Day present. (pause to get another cookie)
 I made a pan shortbread, using the method (but not the recipe) from Cooks Illustrated. Later I made a pan of chocolate shortbread, since I've finally found a recipe that doesn't involve icing sugar or cornstarch but still keeps its shape nicely. And because my child shouldn't leave my house without baked goods.

Besides baking cookies, Chris was helpfully tall, and hung up my basket chair to take advantage of the warm clear weather we had all weekend. Just gorgeous. And here is the very chair. 

 In the midst of lilac blossoms.

I always forget how brief blossom time is. The plum and pear have lost all their white blooms, and the Spartan tree's white is stained with brown edging. The Transparent was heaped with white froth for a little while, and now it's only green, with some powdery mildew mocking me. Also the horrible invisible caterpillars have done their usual trick of chewing through the bud stems so that the infant incipient apples fall away when you brush a hand over them.
 Chris and Shannon and I wandered about in the backyard and spent a little while finding the green caterpillars curled in folded leaves on the pear and apple trees, allowing one to squish them inside the leaf in a most satisfactory and sanitary way.

On the Sunday we hit the Times Colonist charity booksale, and I managed to restrain myself to two bags of books. Mark found another copy of the big book on stained glass that we have, so I can give it to my apprentice (yay!) and I found a few for Christmas and Twelfth Night presents as well as disposable reading.
Actually, I probably would have bought more books except that I went off with the kids for a late lunch at John's Place, which turned into a Mother's Day brunch (is it still brunch at 2 pm?) because the special omelette looked so enticing. Plus two free slices of cheesecake which worked out just right between three of us. And that took out at least 3 hours that I could have been using to go through the poor neglected hardcover fiction section, not to mention crafts and hobbies.
Just as well I suppose, though.

So it was a good weekend, though not as writing-productive as it could have been. I haven't posted as much this month because I'm trying to get that last burst of wordcount on, to get Storyline Two settled by the end of the month. I'm gearing up for the Kaiju Big Battel with the vampires, and I need to be sure who all will be there for it. Also I wrote a 'fen blow' into an earlier section to liven it up, and that means there needs to be a fen blow at the climax too. Argh. Well, more excitement, anyways.

I leave you with a picture of shortbread, this lot made with demerara sugar.