March 2012 Archives

I was delighted this past Monday, March 26th, to see two egrets standing at the edge of one of the large retention ponds to the west of our home. Mother and I used to vie to see who might see the first egret to return, and there was always a race to see who would see them first as we drove past on our way to exercise. It's a miracle I didn't drive off the road while swiveling my head, looking for egrets!

Following two weeks of incredibly warm weather, we are now in a cooler trend, with rain expected off and on during the coming week. Many of my daffodils need to be dead-headed, but I still have a lovely collection in bloom, along with the redbud tree at the front of the house. The snowbells burst into bloom, and I discovered that they are apparently getting help from the chipmunks to expand the area they cover. The chippies have moved all my windflowers out into the lawn!

The star magnolia, squill and forsythia blooms are gone, but the tulips have opened. I wouldn't be surprised to see the iris open at their usual time, despite all the warm weather we had.

My herb garden has gotten off to a good start. I need to prune the winter savory, and dig up volunteer garlic chives. If I find the time, I'm digging them out of the garden. They have become a plant I no longer love. And, I need to dig up some volunteers in the walkway of the herb garden, just to tidy things up. I'll wait until this weekend, because it's supposed to rain tomorrow.

I'm surrounded by green this weekend. We've celebrated St. Patrick's Day with friends from church at the annual Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner, and today we've been out in the glorious weather that is such a surprise at this time of year, with grass and chives greening up, and an array of flowers and shrubs in bloom.

The "green" memory that has been floating through my head is one of my parents on a trip to Biloxi and the Gulf Coast that must have taken place during the 60s or 70s. They had decided to travel south along the Mississippi by car leaving about the second week of March. Dad wasn't interested in spending his time in a motor home, so they drove and stopped at Holiday Inns along the way.

Dad was always big on breakfast, so they started each day early. As they got into southern Illinois grits began appearing on his plates. The next day he'd tell the waitress that she could leave the grits off the plate, but the cooks couldn't imagine anyone going without grits, so Dad got them whether he wanted them or not.

By the time they arrived in Biloxi, St. Paddy's Day was just around the corner. Dad went to breakfast hoping against hope that they would leave the grits off his plate. The waitress proudly set the plate before him, and lo and behold....there were GREEN GRITS!

I wish I could tell you what he did. He may have just resigned himself to the grits, or perhaps he sent the plate back. I can't recall. Mom and Dad told us about the green grits when they got home, and it's always been one of those family stories that has amused me.

I know....I'm easily amused. *G* But I'm with Dad.....no grits for me, green or otherwise!

Usually by the middle of March we are seeing daffodil and tulip greens, with blooms expected in early to mid April. This evening I saw Ice Follies daffodils, forsythia, star magnolia, and squill in bloom. The crocus have fainted from the heat!

We've had a week of temps from the upper sixties to the upper seventies. I was talking with Dear Husband today, while standing in the kitchen. I looked out the window and saw a gray squirrel flattened out in the grass in the shade of the house, trying to cool his belly. He looked more like a flying squirrel who had come in for a landing than one of our regular visitors.

I had two golden delicious apples that were on the wrinkled side. I cut them each into 16 pieces and dropped them under the bird feeder during the middle of the week when I filled the feeders. One of the ground squirrels discovered the bounty. He filled his cheeks with seeds and then crammed an apple between his teeth and took off running up the herb garden walkway with his tail straight up in the air. He jumped over the timbers at the end, ran across the lawn and under Dear Husband's truck to the rough area east of the driveway. I watched him do the same routine twice more before I had to go back to work. Half an hour later, the apples had disappeared! *G* I wonder if he was going to have the family over to share the feast or if he was planning on canning apple pie filling....

Tomorrow, when I go out to take pictures of all the blooms, I'll check to see if the May apples are in bloom in the grove.

I love spring, but could be go back to the fifty and sixty degree temps and sneak up on it? Please!

I have been blessed today! First of all, we went to the Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner at church, so I got to celebrate with the Irish and didn't have to cook or clean up. But, there was something even better about our night out.

Each year there is an auction following the dinner. One of my friends, Mary Rinn, passed away at the end of last year. She had been instrumental in creating Scraps on a Mission. I had been making a wonderful, bright baby quilt to show her when we met again, and then she was gone. So, when I was asked if I would contribute a baby quilt to the auction, I said yes. I added a name tag to the quilt saying that it was in memory of Mary Rinn.

I was concerned, in these tight economic times, that no one would want to bid on the quilt. Dear Husband and I discussed it, and came to an amount we could afford to bid. I was actually expecting to win back the quilt I had made.

The crowd was difficult and noisy. The bids were small and slow in coming, despite the fact that the money went to support an excellent cause. I didn't realize it, but the auctioneer saved my quilt for last. The very first bid blew me out of the water. I never had the chance to bid and sat back and watched the bids increase until it fetched two and a half times what would have been my top bid!

The quilt has gone to a very good home. The woman who won it, remembers Mary fondly, and felt she needed the ties it provided to Mary. When she asked her husband what she could bid, he said, "Whatever it takes."

Mary, your big heart and generosity have helped others one more time. Thanks!

My garden seems to be persevering despite the odd weather we've had the past few weeks. The daffodils showed up in February which is really early for our Zone 5 temperatures. The warm weather was followed by a blast of cold and snow. I thought I might loose the blooms for this year, but everything is still pushing up out of the ground and greening (or in the case of the tulips bronzing) up. Our temps the past two days have been in the 60s, so I'd guess the plants are really confused.

I saw the first of the crocus today. The chipmunks have replanted them in odd places, so I get lovely surprises. I saw one blooming amidst the mounds of oregano and another in the front garden, both some distance from where they have been planted.

When I was filling the bird feeders earlier this week, I noticed that the chives, the oregano, and the feverfew were greening up. They are truly hardy plants and don't let a little snow bother them once they feel the time is right to grow. I noticed the catnip that has transplanted itself around the north end of the house was adding leaves, too.

In the chat covered walkway of the herb garden, I have an invasion of lamb's ears. While I was working on the filing this week, I came across a card that was an advertisement for one of those gardening "books" that you buy as a series of over-sized cards. This particular card was talking about a low maintenance garden, and lamb's ears were one of the plants that had been used to make a striking border garden. Perhaps I need to trim the lamb's ears back, and get them planted in other parts of my gardens!

I love spring! I'm ready to be doing some work outside!

I'd so like to tell you that I am a perfect person....that as soon as a piece of paper crosses my desk, I act on it and file it. But the truth is......I hate filing!

I have been doing a lot of spring cleaning recently. I cleaned my bedroom closet, and you can even see the floor now! That went to my head, and I started working on the closet in the guest bedroom. I have a couple more closets to work on, and then I'm going to re-organize the pantries.

But, meanwhile, I decided that I need to tame the boxes of junk and papers in the office. God, I'll be at this for WEEKS! I took a stack at a time from the desk, and sorted it into personal things, and office business. I got all the office business finished so that I could work on the rest. It seems that I am relatively good about the office, to the detriment of our personal papers.

Part of the problem is that it isn't always easy to decide HOW or WHERE to file a paper. I'm going to have to overhaul the files so that we can find personal papers once they are filed. It appears that we need an automotive file, with subcategories of repair, titles, and licenses. That was an easy decision. Dear Husband is on Medicare, and knowing what to keep of those papers would be a big help. Right now I have an over-sized binder, and I'm filing it all.

Today, I opened four banker's boxes, one at a time, and went through everything, sorting it for filing tomorrow. I found a box with electronic equipment, so at that point, I brought up the bag of electronics from my closet and dumped it on the table. I now know what works and what doesn't. Things that didn't work have either been pitched out or saved for the electronics pickup. I must have a dozen sets of headphones, and six or more things that probably convert players from battery power to electricity. There's a headset with a microphone attached. (I bet I could use it as a back up for the computer, for Skype.) I have a complete set of accessories for my CD player for the car, but no CD player. (It died.)

When I finish all this reorganization, I hope to be able to do my taxes. My closets and the office will be infinitely cleaner, and will look airy, and I will be one with the world. Until then......leave sweets on my table and go hide!

I've spent a lot of time in the past two weeks looking out the windows in the kitchen and the "green" room. We've had a love affair with the wildlife around us, and frequently spend time watching what they are doing.

We've been amazed at the numbers of birds and squirrels we've seen lately. Normally we have about four or five grey squirrels under the bird feeders at a time. Of course, they don't wear little name tags, so there could obviously be a lot more than four squirrels in the area. I was astonished to see thirteen of them under the feeders at one time, all playing well with each other. I started counting them, and called Dear Husband to the window because it was so unusual.

Later that same day, I called him back to the windows to see what had to be the re-staging of the Hitchcock movie "The Birds." I have NEVER seen so many birds land under the feeders at one time. This was a very large flock of red-winged blackbirds. Those birds are not uncommon visitors, but we've never seen them in such numbers before. They covered the ground in a ten-foot circle, so tightly packed that you could barely see the ground, and almost as many were under the second feeder. They were with us for about fifteen minutes before exhausting the seed and moving on.

Mother and I used to have a game we played in the spring, as we watched life return to our area. There was a race to be the first one to say "I saw a robin!" Usually Mother or Dear Husband won that race, but I was looking out the same windows last week and saw a robin on February 27th! "Wait.....there are two. No....Look....THREE. By damn, there are FIVE ROBINS in my back yard!!!" I won the race, Mom. Did you send them to me???

Meanwhile, the shrubs around the feeder looked like Christmas. This winter we've had ten to twelve male cardinal visiting at one time plus a lot of lady cardinals. I'm sure they were watching the robins and red-winged blackbirds and felt they needed to get their numbers up. We did a fast count and figured we had seventeen or eighteen male cardinals that morning.

It's been a wonderful winter, and it looks like spring is on it's way to visit us. It's been a joy to get to watch all our visitors.