I’ve been reading about probate court and trying to find videos to watch so I have some idea what goes on. My new novel has a lot of will problems and it feels very retro. Dorothy Sayers discussed inheritance problems in Unnatural Death. Agatha Christie discussed them in Sad Cypress. Both authors wrote short stories where their detectives help poor but worthy inheritors find missing wills. Christie sent Poirot to aid in The Case of the Missing Will and Lord Peter Wimsey worked on The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager’s Will.

This kind of research comes up with factoids such as, that the Maryland courts dealing with probate are called Orphans Courts. Ohio probate courts are located with the county circuit courts. Whatever else I read the one general idea is that probate takes a while. This conflicts with certain aspects of my story and I’ve had to work on reconciling this reality with my fictional universe.

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Anyway, spring is finally coming. The actual arrival time can vary by at least a month here and I can tell in the following way. We have a lot of daffodils and sometimes they bloom before March 9. This year they bloomed a week later. I’ve seen years where they bloom a month later. I found this Bruegel picture by searching the National Gallery of Art in DC on line, asking for daffodils. This picture has a few tiny daffodils in the vase on the right of the picture. Tulips and carnations are more prominent. Probably camellias. I don’t know what the blue or red flowers are but there are snowdrops in the vase with the daffodils.

Flowers in a Basket and a Vase. 1615. Jan Brueghel the Elder

I did a search for Saint Katharine of Sweden on the NGA website. She is one of the saints for the day. The website presented me with a Thomas Cole picture of New Hampshire. That’s about the way my brain is working, since I am still stuffed up with the remains of a cold. However, NGA seems to have decided that they won’t do such a thing again. The second time I tried they simply said I was highly creative since they had nothing to post for my search. Well, okay!