We Are Melting.......

I didn’t shovel the snow under the truck this past snow storm.  I wasn’t really feeling strong enough to do it and I figure it will be gone by spring. Yesterday the snow on the back canvas that covers the truck bed was really losing a lot of snow.  It was like a small mountain stream of water coming off the back as the sun soaked into the black cover.

 I walked the entire area of the backyard yesterday just to see what is out there.. I see this morning that every footprint that I made in the snow has already melted open, showing grass shapes of where I had walked. The raised garden will be my tomato patch again this year.  It will be planted earlier this year as we were in the middle of moving last year and I planted a month late.

My neighbor’s backyard looks like this when you position your lens between the slots of his gate. His descending stairs are here and the sedum do enhance the stairs in the summer.   He has heavy weed barrier down so that no weeds will develop. He had a load of large stone put in on top of it to hold it down.

There were three batches of these going over and this is the one shot that I caught two of them in the viewfinder. The Des Moines River is open right now so all the waterfowl and bald eagles are happy. We saw swans yesterday on the one open area on Lake Saylorville as we came home from our tax man's town. Small ducks are wintering over here in this area but I never see them fly over our place.

The red twig dogwood shrubs are turing red now at this time of the year. They normally are blacker in color during the summer but the red is nice to see.  I am anxious to see how the branch out after their butch hair cut.  I have seen these pruned to the ground in garden magazines letting them start over at a lower height. This will actually be our second spring here at this place but I will have more time to notice it all developing.

Yesterday the bench was already melted of snow.   This shot shows the angel being uncovered from its snow blanket.  It won’t be long for me to again  be running into the bench,  as I mow grass around it.

Yesterday we went to our restaurant where they give free pie on Wednesdays. It was so crowded. It may have been of the holiday but it usually is very busy as some people like free things. We went early as we knew we had to venture up to the old place later in the day to have our  taxes figured. We brought both of our free pies pieces home so the eat them later.  Eating a full meal and putting a whole piece of pie down afterwards  just doesn’t work for me.

Our tax preparer from the past years, retired, and we had a new guy helping us this year. He is such a nice young man who really knows his stuff.  Today's taxes are figured with the cooperation of the governments computer.  Our investment company has already sent in all the paper work to the IRS and the tax preparer pulls it up on the government computer.  The spaces are blank where all the figures are suppose to go but the computer will know if he filled in the spaces correctly. They already know the information.  Our whole year's, and past years finances, are already on a form for any tax preparer can pull up and fill in. I am surprise that the government doesn’t go in and place what is going to be placed where, but that would be more like big government controlling it all. So when our taxes are filed, the IRS will verify the forms to see if our preparer did an accurate job.  He did say that by summer, he will know what mistake that could have been made. That must be a big computer that the government has to hold the records of 200 million people or more. I stand amazed and we were happy with our tax outcome this year.

No plans for today as we did two things yesterday. I did almost forget to recycle by putting out the bin, but they go late in the day.  I have to sometimes look up the street to be sure it is the right day. Our melting continues today and that is good.  I want see rivers and streams running down our sidewalks and streets.  It gets us that much closer to some better weather by eliminating the snow.  Thanks for stopping by today.