Chipmunk Cheeks

This cute little chipmunk has been getting crumbs from under the bird feeders. He goes about two feet away and empties his cheeks (we can see the grass move but can't see him), and then he starts filling his cheeks again. He worked for well over an hour today.

There is a squirrel that's been digging under the feeders, and we're wondering if he'll find the chipmunk's stash. It might not have been such a good plan by the little chipmunk.

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.

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.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Or not.

This is Peka last January.

This was him as soon as it started getting really cold this winter.

As soon as I switched out and put my heavier duvet cover on the bed, he started getting up there to sleep during the day. It's fluffier and so he sinks into it more.

At least somebody, or something, has figured out how to acclimate in this weather.

I'm just a little jealous of the naps on my bed during the day.

Stuff...

We have the crud at our house. It's not the flu, or H1N1, just the old regular cold crud. Still, it's not fun.

Fall and the very cool weather has hit with a force. We've already had a heavy frost, and with the exception of tomorrow's forecasted 60-degree day, our 10-day forecast barely has us getting into the 50s, and a couple of days has us in the 40s. The constant gales we have had overnight and throughout this morning are only exceeded in my recent memory by Tropical Storm Ernesto's 60 mph winds while we were living in Fort Eustis, Virginia.

I've started a new afghan. It's for Hubby. Instead of 10 plain rows and then one accent row (which was that dreaded fuzzy yarn), repeat until finished, I'm doing 20 plain rows followed by two accent rows, repeat until finished. Repeat until finished is however long I want it to be, which will probably be around 200 rows. Or so.

And since he's a guy and a little wider his is 200 stitches across instead of 150. I want him to be well-covered and warm and be able to tuck it in if he's cold.

I gave in and turned the heat on for the first time yesterday evening for about 30 minutes. It was about 67 degrees in the house. It's been colder and I've been fine, but I guess with the crud I just couldn't handle it any longer. We keep our thermostats at 68 during the day in the winter and 62 at night. We have good duvet covers. I think my mom thought we were crazy.

I have over 4,000 emails in my inbox. I think I'm getting close to 5,000. I don't do email well. I've been procrastinating horribly since 2,000. Yes, I know you might think I was procrastinating before that, but I though I'd take care of it at 2,000, which means that I actually didn't start procrastinating until then. (Remember I'm sick and if it makes me feel better to tell the story that way, just let me.) My goal is to take care of it before Hubby's birthday next week, like he cares, but I need a target to shoot for, and my birthday is way too far away.

It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month. My mom is a breast cancer survivor. She was diagnosed on my birthday in 1998. I had a benign biopsy in 1997. Hubby wore a tie with pink breast cancer ribbons on it to work yesterday. He will wear it a lot this month.

I've spent the last two weeks going to the oral surgeon every other day for Sparky. She had her wisdom teeth extracted several weeks ago. They were healing fine, all closed up, and then she developed an infection on one of the bottom areas (it wasn't a dry socket). She had to have it reopened (you can read between the lines), packed with stuff, and sutured back up on the Friday the girls left for their youth trip. We've gone every other day since then to have the packing removed and replaced. Today it was removed and the site is just open. She has to rinse it well while it closes up, and then we go back in a week for the doctor to check it and make sure it's closing properly.

Do you have days when you feel like all you can do is "Stuff?"

The Thanksgiving Bird

We have multiple ways to drive to church. Most of them involve various back and side roads, and many of them involve some dirt roads. Depending on which way you go and how much dirt road you want, you can cut off a lot of time.

You go the main roads, like expressway and highway, it would take you some serious time to get from our house to church. Like I would need to leave right now to get there tomorrow. Okay, something like 45 minutes, more in rush hour. We never, ever go that way.

There is one way to go where you can take no dirt roads (except out the back of our subdivision), and it takes about 20 minutes if you hit every light just right.

When you take one of the ways with dirt roads, you're down to 12 minutes on a perfect trip, or somewhere around 15 to 18 minutes. And you are very likely to see some wildlife on the way, sometimes alive, sometimes not.

Okay. Opportunity past. That's what Hubby said. I saw these turkeys — probably two females and their 12 chicks while taking the boys to VBS. Hubby said I should've hit them and we would have had plenty to eat on Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Martin Luther King Day, Valentine's Day, etc. My only problem — who would have plucked them and taken out all the parts that you don't want? And aren't some of those parts poisonous if you don't get them out?

I so sound like a city girl. That could explain why I hate camping.

And Hubby was just kidding about hitting them. Unless of course they fly into my side window.

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.