leafing out

It's getting greener!

Dogwood

More sunshine and flowers. Dogwoods are the most graceful tree I've ever seen. It is impossible to take a bad photograph of one--clichéd, yes, bad, no. 

shorts!

Today was warm enough for me to wear shorts for the first time--and even sandals when I wasn't walking in high grass.

I almost stepped on this pretty fellow. Good that I had the camera out already.

calf envy

Here's the bottom with the creek on the right, seen from the west boundary looking east--that one cedar in the distance is on the east boundary. It's about five acres, I think. I want so much to have something besides deer grazing there. 

Sunday morning coffee with rain

I usually save the blue willow cups for those weekdays when I want to channel my grandmother's ability to Get Things Done, but this morning the vivid blue seemed to go with the vivid green outside. I have enjoyed the sound of rain on the roof all day, ranging from pounding (most of the time) to gentle drips (occasionally) combined with not having to set foot outside if I don't want to. I had planned to walk down to the creek and check on the bluebells, but as the rain continues it seems more appropriate to stay inside and get out Winnie the Pooh and read "In which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water."

lilac

Here's the lilac I cut from the bush at my old house. I chose a branch that half broke off during the ice storm. The silver pitcher belonged to my great-great-aunt, who was only a year old when the Yankees stole her silver baby cup right out of her hand while she was drinking her milk, but her older sister my great-grandmother was five and old enough to remember.

bluebells

I walked down to the creek this afternoon, taking the camera instead of the dog, and found the bluebells open and lots of water in the creek, as I expected. Unexpectedly, I found woodland phlox and some white flower I can't recognize. It's spring, all right.

I promised redbud and I deliver

After the mud dried up some I stood on the very edgiest edge of the bluff and got close enough to the opened redbud to get some pictures. Then I came indoors and took some of favorites I picked at my old house. More plants to move. More digging. 

nut nostalgia

When I walked down to the creek Sunday afternoon I took Stony with me, on a flexi-lead. I kept him from eating any hickory nutshells that the squirrels discarded, and I picked up one butternut and put it in my pocket. The nutcracker and nut picks are in a box somewhere, so I used pliers and the point of a knife to get most of the meat out. It was just as sweet and buttery as the ones from my childhood.

sunset captured

Through the etched glass above the front door.

No turkey photo

I was too slow to go get the camera, so I'll have to just talk about this turkey. He came up about ten feet from the kitchen steps, and studied me intently. First with the head on one side, then the other. Then he paced back and forth inspecting me through the glass, pausing every now and then to eat a bite. He was by himself, although earlier I'd seen a group of three down at the end of the clearing just inside the woods. 

I went into the next room to get the camera and when I came back, he was gone. I guess he thought I'd lost interest. 

green to be seen

The trees haven't put out any green (except what they kept over the winter) but the grass is bright green now, and the undergrowth in the woods is beginning to have leaves now. This is encouraging.