Sure enough, the snow started to melt today, when it was above freezing during the daylight hours. But there’s still a lot of ground covered, so this is going to take a while. It brings to mind the preternaturally warm March we had last year. Which was a prelude to drought, so I don’t think we want that again.

During the snow day on Tuesday, Lilly and Ann went out to build a structure in the back yard. They called it a snow couch, which they said was easier than a snowman.

Yuriko got a package of Curly’s Meaty Barbecue Baby Back Pork Ribs from a warehouse store recently, and we ate them even more recently. At least I think that was the name. I’m not going to dig the wrapping out of the trash now. Precooked, so all you do is heat them. Meaty, all right. But the sauce was too sweet, we concluded. Not enough tang. I’m sure it can be a difficult balance, but they erred on the side of sweetness. Maybe they were misled by focus groups.

Pictured on the right, fruit on custard. Yuriko didn’t bring that home, but made it not long ago, and we liked it a lot. The kiwi on it, I happened to find out, was imported from Italy. That was my new fact for the day: Italy has a kiwi crop. That’s been true for a while now, it seems. A 2008 article in the Los Angeles Times tells us: “Somewhat improbably, Italy has grown to become the world’s largest producer of the odd furry fruit, according to the National Institute of Agricultural Economics, surpassing even New Zealand, which coined the name for the fruit once known as the Chinese gooseberry.”