Fresh air and the sweet smell of emerging life through the mud shifting under our feet as we made our way around Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, Connecticut, yesterday filled the day with sunlit joy. Lyman Orchards offered an apple, rather than an egg, hunt for kids, hayrides, the opportunity to pet bunnies, to color, to pose for a photo with the Easter bunny, to eat cider doughnuts and kettle-cooked popcorn, to watch the geese alight on the pond. We did these things with Adella today, and it was great to just plain be a kid with her and enjoy it. (Click here to see what I mean.)

Lyman Orchards gives away 18,000 apples, plus random prizes, to the kids who participate. Della worked on her upper-body strength and collected a good ten pounds of apples. The place was packed with every shape and size of kid munching on gigantic apples. It felt good, too, to climb back into the magically warm car after a few hours in the crisp March air.

Afterwards, we made our way down Route 17 to New Haven so I could photograph some more graffiti. Della posed at the open-air art gallery we found and had a great time being a part of the vibrant, innovative, inviting production.

We stopped into the Yale Art Gallery afterwards and decided to look at whatever interested us and ignore the rest. Whereupon Della found a very interesting chair for visitors and curled up inside it. The interest value of the chair was second only to the triangular staircase in the circular stairwell and perhaps even with the chicken wire sculpture that looked like a gigantic scrubbing pad. We shuddered to think what happened to the chickens, but we hope they're doing better than the wire thing the aesthetic value of which exceeds our combined intellects and tastes.

I like the days that are so good and full it feels nice to go home full and satisfied and still curious about all the beautiful things ours for the taking if we go through the door--or the chicken wire fence.