Def-y's Categorizing: March 2012 Archives

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!

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.