No Buds on the Birch......

The birch isn't the only thing that gets buds early but it is one of the ones that I notice first.  There are no buds on the tree. It does look like there is a haze of something happeing at the top branches. It was 83 degrees F. yesterday and this morning it was 31.4 degrees F. 

I did notice the first buds ever on my small lilac shrub.  I didn't go look at the bigger ones of the lilacs but the newly started lilac had a couple of buds starting on it. Also I see the tiny branch at the top of the photo on the right is forming something.  I think that is a honeysuckle bush branch.

My one neighbor was going to get her camper moved today so she could start working on her vegetable garden.  That was yesterday and today it is a different story.  It looks like we will have normal freezing temperatures in the night the rest of the week.

Our high temperature today in going to be 50 degrees F. and I do remember not two weeks ago we thought that was pretty good to have. 

This was an encouraging sight for me to see yesterday.  I moved this iris to the south of the house in the summer.  It looked like it was doing good until I decided to reside the house and then paint it in that area.  I spent a lot of time trying not to step on it.  This rhizome is tough as you can see it is coming up strong. I think this is the one that they call a black iris even though it is just a very deep purple.  It turns purple once it has opened up with its dark color. I put bore killer around it when I planted it and I may just hit it again with it this spring.

It is a sure sign of spring when I can pull the metal pieces that are stuck in the ground to hold down the legs of the reindeer ornaments.  I had tried in February and the ground was very much frozen and wouldn't let me pull them out.

Having my camera in hand I though I could take down a few of the outside ornaments yesterday with just one hand.  I picked up a suet container leftover from the feeder.  It had blown out into the yard.  It only held four ornaments so I hung them by their paperclip hangers on the edge of the plastic tray.

I know my neighbor who came over for a short visit thought I was strange, but I was just going to take a few inside and eventually come back to get the rest.  It was very windy and now it is cold and windy.  I will  get them down but not today.  I like how you can see one hanging up in the top of the tree ready for me to get the stepladder to get it down.

Buying oranges in the winter in Iowa makes me feel like I am visiting Florida.  We had a batch of five navel oranges the last week and they were so good. I had hand picked them from a pile. These look like the same kind but they just are not as sweet as the first batch. I paid fifty cents apiece for the first ones and these were a little less than that as they were in a large bag.  You can not beat seeing the color at this time of the year.



We are taking my wife's friend out for a meal this noon and will take her to shop later.  It will be good to get out again today.  My wife's cough hangs on but it is so mild compared to what she originally had.  We will be getting out into the wind so I am encouraging her to wrap a scarf around her when we go in and out of the buildings.   The wind  has died down compared to last night's roaring Canadian wind but we still have a little of it today.         Thank you for your visit here today.