Yesterday, we were out on the porch doing a few chores – really, timing is everything – and I heard a screechy bird call. It reminded me of the sound from the bald eagle we saw last year. I stopped everything and searched the neighboring trees and, sure enough, there was a bald eagle on top of a very tall fir tree on my neighbor’s property. He was quite vocal! We watched him for a long time. Eventually. Don crossed the street to look more closely and he returned with the news that there were two  eagles up there! Well, I had to fetch my big girl camera. I cropped the heck out of this, so ..read more

The other crabapples have fully bloomed. They’re simply gorgeous. I see them from the window above the kitchen sink. I ended up going to the nursery on Saturday. It was crowded, but not too crowded. I had an itch to buy some plants for the porch. I came home and started potting some of them but the wind started kicking up, so I had to stop early. It was so nice to see some flowers! There is some of the lobelia that I use every year. (I’m nothing if not predictable.) Though, I did add an additional color to the mix. Today, I’ll start to pot the impatiens. It’s suddenly very warm here – in th ..read more

We ended up mowing the entire property yesterday save for the corral, which I had mowed last Sunday. I was on the phone with my friend Doug and Don mentioned that he was going out to mow the lilac side of the lawn. Okay. But, as I sat there talking to Doug, I noticed that Don had finished that side and had moved on to the main part of the lawn. He took a couple of breaks, but by the time I joined him out there, he had finished about 3/4 of that huge expanse. I took over and worked my way through the rest of that section, then upward alongside the house, then to the secret garden (still soggy ..read more

Last night the temperature went down to 31 and there was frost on my car windshield this morning. Tonight? 34. On Saturday things will get back to normal and I think we will have officially turned the corner into Serious Spring. I can’t wait. My sinuses can’t wait, as well. I’m going to do some mowing today. Same mower as last year – with the real wheel drive broken. When we can afford to, we’ll replace it. But with Don’s car repairs and some other expenses needing to be dealt with first, we’ll just have to work with the mower as is. We have to mow in smaller increments, but we get it done. As ..read more

Is that the sun? Yes, it is! Yesterday was rather cold and windy – a strange day. I did go out and mow the corral in the afternoon because Don was away for his gig and I was trying to fill up the day with activities. It only took about twenty minutes or so and now it looks much nicer out there. As I look out the window from my perch in the den, I see little hints on green on some of the trees in the distance.  Gosh, there’s so much that needs to be done out there! In addition to more cleaning out of garden beds, I have some more pruning to do on the boxwoods, have to move the Adirondack c ..read more

Saturday morning – a gray and gloomy looking morning, for sure. I think it rained a bit overnight. Frankly, I’m tired of all the rain we’ve been having and I’d give anything for a few days of sunshine. Both Don and I worked outside yesterday – he cleaned up and enlarged the trails up in the woods. I dug more invasive weeds out – I swear I will be doing this all summer long – and cleaned out one of the smaller garden beds. We were tuckered out after all that work! But slowly, weather permitting, I’m making some progress on early spring cleanup. I’m three quarters of the way through with The Bla ..read more

The trees in this puzzle were a challenge, to say the least. Many is the day that Don could hear me cursing as I tried to figure out what piece went where. But….I finally finished it on Wednesday. Central Park in Autumn. And because it is an autumn theme, I got it for a deep discount. It’s done. I survived the trees. And today, I’ll take it apart and box it up. It may be time to shift to oil painting. Since I have only one spot in which to paint or put together a puzzle, the puzzles will have to cease – at least, temporarily. I don’t necessarily feel inspired to paint, though I do keep gettin ..read more

First of all, I apologize for not responding to your comments on dreams. I promise I will, but we’ve been busy working outside, as well as mowing, and Don woke me up in the middle of the night making strange noises and I never got back to sleep. On top of all of that, there’s something else wrong with Don’s car and we don’t have the money to fix any of it at the moment. Oh, I could go on with this list, because there’s much more, but this is enough ‘poor me’ for today. So. I’m sleep deprived and slightly pissed off at Don, even though he didn’t know he was making the noises. He felt so bad ab ..read more

Lilac buds! But there are not nearly as many as last year. Lilacs need lots of winter cold and, though we had a stretch of very cold weather in January, it was warmer than usual this year. It was nice to have the warmer temperatures, but there’s a price to pay. The crabapple by the catalpa is in full bloom. The daffodils are lovely. The forsythia is very full this year and very yellow, as well. Yesterday was a bizarre day. I worked outside in the morning. I was digging up an invasive plant – I swear this entire spring will be spent doing this, it’s endless – and then I came in because my back ..read more

Tons of rain yesterday and then the wind came. It’s still a little windy out there and, though we were supposed to have no rain today, we might have some this morning. Don just went out to work on the trails, where he has been raking and cleaning things up. I’ll wait to see if it rains around 10 am. If it does, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get some work done. Dear little Imogen. I hadn’t pulled her off the shelf in a while, so I remedied that the other day. She was one of my first Blythes. The third, I believe. She arrived at the house just before I took off for 6 weeks in Brooklyn whe ..read more