Easter Sunday

Happy Easter and Blessed Spring from us here on Not Wisteria Lane, to all of you!

I was up in time to hear the early morning drumming of the downy woodpecker who likes to bang against the outside of the computer area almost every day.

It's a pretty cool sound, though you can put easy money on it totally firing up the cat each morning. After a minute or two of just enjoying his rhythms, I snuck out the front door and was able to reach my camera hand around the arbor vitae to catch this shot of him before he flew off.

Here we go: this never fails. Each spring, I'm keeping an eye on 10 million different clusters of crocus foliage, trying to guess where the first blossom will appear.

And every year, the first flower comes from some spot I wasn't even watching. Here's our first Purple Pretty, springing from a clump of shasta daisy foliage this morning.

Here's the bunnies Owen and I surprised one another with this morning, each of them as different as we two. Mine to him is the cute, cuddly guy with the carrot and the plaid bowtie. His to me was this little thug-bunny with the bling and the colors. Heh heh...he even sings a bit of "In Da Club" (Go shorty, it's yer birthday...) when you squeeze his paw. Quite a pair, aren't we...er, they?

I shouldn't be surprised that Em's been a little wistful around the empty rabbit cage lately. There's no reason why she shouldn't be missing George. We all are, especially on his big holiday.

So far, we've been successful in resisting the temptation to fill his void with some new little bunny, or a pair of chicks or a duck (oh, how Badum would love that...)or something even less predictable.

Better to focus on the kids we have already...especially since our boy Badum seems to have a renewed spirit of adventure, having escaped twice into the Great Outdoors this past week. Fortunately, the bird-filled skies just mesmerize this kitty and he's fairly easy to corral.

I had my own celebration of spring today with a bit of yard work, getting the front lawn raked and assorted shrubs at the front of the house pruned into tidy shape for the coming season. When that was through, I tackled the years of old dried foliage of past seasons that had built up on the lump of a hill in our backyard which houses the septic system.

There's all kinds of things growing there...looks like asters and goldenrod and some daisy variety, as well as something that may be russian sage or something similar. Clearing away all the old stuff opened up all the green clumps of foliage underneath and hopefully they'll grow better for the exposure.

Since being atop the hill (I call it Mount Dump-it) affords full views of the neighbors' yards and the similar lumps in their own backyards, working up there afforded me the chance to meet another of our neighbors. They are quite happy to see someone taking an interest in making things look better, which is encouraging. Of course having neighbors to talk to at all while I'm at assorted chores is still a new thing.


Hey, look what happens to your shoelace when you don't realize it's become untied while you're raking! Fortunately, this is last year's pair, dedicated now only to gardening.

I started pruning some of the unnecessary branches from the long-untended apple tree, as well, but the remainder of that project remains for another day and a greater variety of tools than my hand pruners.

However, I did bring in a few branches to see if I can force some blooms from them.
They'll be a nice foil to the african violet, which as you can see is also helping to move the whole Spring Thing along.

In yet another sign of the changing season, did you know that yesterday was National Pillow Fight Day? I had no idea--you should totally check out the video at JMG and watch those feathers fly!