Spring In A Week

Last Thursday I was out driving and saw the first daffodils.

Friday I saw more daffodils and some forsythia. Our grass started going from brown to green. I also took these pictures of the trees out in front of our house and our neighbor's house.


The leaves on our trees turn red before they turn green. I don't know what kind of trees they are.

I decided to check out the landscaping in front and see if there was anything happening. There was!



Spring literally 'sprung' last week at our house!

I know lots of the country is in full bloom, and some of it has been for a couple of months or more. It's May 1st, and this is the view of the trees out our back door.

Here are a male red-bellied woodpecker and a male downy woodpecker on side-by-side trees, which happen to still be barren.

But on the drive to church today there were hints of green in the tops of some of the early budding trees. Soon we will be in full bloom too.

And then in five months we'll be prepping for winter again.

Last Monday

The 18th of April, we had three inches of snow. It was about 28 degrees outside.




It looks like even this American Tree Sparrow was looking up to figure out what was going on!

It's 50 right now. That seems almost like summer after last Monday.

Life In Michigan

According to the Weather Channel, we got 4.2 inches of snow in the last 24 hours, which actually started late yesterday afternoon.

We are still supposed to get a wintry mix and up to another 1 inch of snow later today and tonight.

How can Memorial Day be just over two months away?

I know they are probably thinking the same thing.


(Two goldfinches and a dark-eyed junco)

Today...

...I met my first blogging friend in person.

Oh, the harassment I've given her about this place, that I get to go frequently and she doesn't.


Today we met there and had lunch and then shopped. She brought her daughters Laura and Heather. Hubby drove me, had lunch with us, piddled around down the road, and then came back for me.

I had a great time getting to know Mari a little more in person and meeting her daughters. Mari was just as nice as I thought she'd be.

I turned out to be the rebel in the bunch.

Mari has blackmail material on me now too.

Good thing she's such a nice person and would never dream of using it.

36

Not my age.

The temperature at 11:00 a.m.

With snow flurries.

Determination

Cindy is breaking the rules a little with Show and Tell Friday this week, so I am too. I'm such a follower sometimes (technically maybe this counts as showing my garden since I live in Michigan and I have no garden in the winter, just yard).

We finally got some significant snow.

It's been a much different winter than last winter was.

My kids have decided to move up from snowman building this year.

Maybe they just feel like they've acclimated and should move even further north to Alaska.

The girls went out and did a lot of work to keep that side from falling in, but it did anyway. They had a hole down to the bottom three rows.

They built it back up. This is how they packed the plastic boxes tight for the 'bricks.'

Here it is following the recovery work.

And here it is the following night after a day with the high temperature slightly above freezing and the sun shining on it.

It survived the night. We expected it to go down.

This is what happened with a high of 39 on Thursday.

39!

This post is linked to Show and Tell Friday hosted by Cindy at My Romantic Home.

Blue Skies

Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see

Bluebirds
Singing a song
Nothing but bluebirds
All day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on

All these pictures were taken from my driveway today during the very slow garage sale. At least the sky was beautiful and the breeze was nice.

You know, when my friend Stacey was here a couple of weeks ago, the first thing I said to her was, "Didn't I tell you the skies were bluer here than anywhere else?" She agreed and talked about how nice the climate was, and how friendly the people were, and how crazy the drivers were.

I told her that was pretty much it in a nutshell.

The Best Of Both Worlds

I live in a suburb of the 11th largest city in the United States. If you'd told me I'd live in the north when I was growing up, much less a big city, I would have laughed at you.

Well, I don't really feel like I live in a big city. There's something about driving on a dirt road to get home that keeps you from that feeling.

This is the road that leads directly to the back of our subdivision, and we like to go this way since our house is one of the first ones. I'd guess our entrance is about a quarter of a mile down once the dirt starts. You can't see it, but some of those potholes right now are about a foot deep, and they've even been worked on by the road department.

The other two sides of the subdivision are also dirt roads, and one of them has a side entrance to the subdivision. The front entrance you can get to by a paved road, although you can still tell you are out in the country.

I took these pictures from different points in the front and middle of our subdivision.


One of the best things — I have seasons — all four of them! And although I am by no means complaining, winter is a bit long here. I think we're working on something like our fifth month right now if November counted, and I think it was cold enough to count. We had some snow flurries that month, so I think that would qualify it.

You look at all of those trees and dirt and farmland, and there are eight to ten Targets within about a 30 minute radius of my house. Four of them alone are within a five to fifteen minute drive. There are an equal number of Wal-Mart stores, the majority of which are Supercenters.

We have professional baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. Zoos, museums, you name it...

It's the best of both worlds.