DEAR ANNIE
BY ANNIE LANE

ENJOYING THE SPRING SEASON

Dear Readers:

Wishing you all a very happy spring.  Whether you just celebrated Passover, Easter or any other holiday, I do hope that you make time to celebrate spring.  It is a time of renewal where we can shed some of our patterns and ways of thinking and trade them in for new, fresh thoughts.  It is a great time to start a new hobby or pick up an old one that you miss.  Below are some of my favorite spring poems and excerpts.  Hope you enjoy.

“A Light Exists in Spring” – by Emily Dickinson

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad
On Solitary Fields
That Science cannot overtake
But Human Nature feels …

“Spring” by William Blake

Sound the flute!
Now it’s mute!
Bird’s delight,
Day and night,
Nightingale,
In the dale,
Lark in the sky, —
Merrily,
Merrily merrily, to welcome in the year …

“Lines written in Early Spring” by William Wordsworth
… Through primrose tufts, in that green bower ,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breaths.
Their thoughts I cannot measure: —
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure …

“Spring” from “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau
“One attraction in coming to the woods to live that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in.  The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk.  Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary.  I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel’s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.  On the 13th of March, after I heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was nearly a foot thick.  As the weather grew warmer, it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away.  One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely.”

~ Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

PEANUT BUTTER SQUARES

These treats are simple, goof-proof and yummy.

• 1/2 cup Crisco shortening
• 1/3 cup smooth and creamy peanut butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup flour

PREHEAT OVEN TO 350*

Cream together all ingredients – except flour – until fluffy.  Then stir in the flour.

Spread in 8″ x 8″ baking pan and bake 20 – 25 minutes.

Cool and frost with this:

FROSTING:

2 TBSP butter, room temperature
2 TBSP peanut butter
1 cup powdered sugar
2 -4 TBSP milk

Mix butter, peanut butter and powdered sugar in small bowl.  Add milk by Tablespoons until desired consistency is reached.  Spread over cooled peanut butter squares.