Apple blossoms, blackflies and chickens

Spring in eastern Ontario can be a season of extremes! Today, the 20th of May was cloudy, rainy, windy and cold. We had the kitchen woodstove toasty warm all day and the past few days at the cafe (the 24 weekend) we also had the woodstove burning to keep the damp and cold at bay. We had a busy time with Paul and Maria and family staying for the weekend and a birthday celebration for 20 people on Sunday evening, as well as the usual long weekend diners and shoppers. Friday evening we had Celtic music with Heather Dale and served a whole lot of our delicious roast pork dinners as well as other tasty dishes. We went home to the farm on Saturday and Sunday night leaving Stephanie in charge and were up early Sunday morning and back in Wilno before 8 am to make breakfasts for some 30 people. I don't mind driving back early in the day: the back roads are quiet and its quite relaxing to motor along drinking coffee and watching for errant wildlife which can leap out on the road in front of the truck.
Monday we closed at two pm after another round of breakfasts and some lunches and were back at the farm by three pm to find Carmelita forlornly wandering around in the yard on the wrong side of the electric fence. Shooed her back in and she promptly came under the wire again...this time showing Alfie how its done so he escaped also. Put the whole lot in the barnyard and watered the ducks and checked for eggs and had a very short nap and drove back to Wilno again for my six pm Writers Group meeting at the tavern. Congratulations in order for Sandra Gulland who is still on the Globe and Mail best seller list for Mistress of the Sun AND showed up with an outline for her next novel The End of Magic. And Jenifer who brought along the entire revised manuscript of Virgin of the Sierra Madre and a lovely chapbook of a poem entitled Hen: la gallinas...written in English and Spanish. Obviously very productive winter in Mexico for both of them.