On Wednesday, I ran out of things to tell them, so today they took a test.

I'll grade the tests this weekend.

Maybe.

I need a nap more than they need my feedback.

My production here on these pages has been minimal.

And minimalist.

But new onions are in the ground, and onion chives and garlic chives have groped through the soil to daylight.

Forsythia, daffodils and quince now bloom.

The cosmos seeds that I harvested from last year's flowers await sowing. The canna roots will rest in the basement for another few weeks.

I'll buy new geraniums this week, if I can get off the sofa.

The St. Pat's Day 10K road race takes place tomorrow in Aggieville (the student district here), the unofficial start of spring in our town. I'll toast the runners with green beer.

The two younger boys will try their best Billie Connolly accents. "My name is Dave, but you can call me Veronica" seems to be their favorite line and they repeat it, laughing as hard the thousandth time as they did the first.

In a few minutes, their mother will pop a tape of "Riverdance" or "Lord of the Dance" into the kitchen VCR, and I will suck in my gut and offer up my Michael Flatley impression on the kitchen tiles to embarrass the kids.

The kids will be out of school next week, so the trampoline went up, ready for a new season of experiments with aerodynamics and physics. And in quieter moments, the tramp will provide a place for the teens who gather here to consider the moon and that other thing -- life, the future, everything -- as they await their moment to be taken seriously.

The lawnmower needs its spark plug, air filter, and oil changed.

Garden beds need cleaning, cultivation, and planting.

It has been a week of transition, anticipation and preparation.

Did I say I need a nap?

Sunday morning is the customary time for my parents to call to check on us, or (more properly) on their grandchildren.

When my parents (both in their seventies) call on a Friday evening, as they did tonight, I feel a quick tightening in my gut. I know the probable "what" of their call, but I wait nearly breathless through the prefatory niceties -- How are the kids? How's the weather? Did you get our letter? When are you coming to visit? These bushes must be beaten before the "who" of their report can be flushed out.

Alzheimers had taken much of my father's brother's wife (my aunt) from us seven years ago, and time took the rest of her tonight in Philadelphia.