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.

Monday with Heat.......

The statue has been rescued from the ground and is temporarily sitting on a rock foundation.  He may get to stay there if I can keep the shrub pruned back.

A photo of the past shows that the snowplows attacked the blue guy with a huge snow pile at the corner of my property.

As the snow receded the guy was left on his back. The milk strainer is an antique that I plant flowers inside during the summer.  Right now it looks like I have junk in the yard.

I was thinking I would start repotting the tomatoes into bigger containers.  I will plant that long stem down into the soil to give it more places to root.  I will wait to see if I think it is risky as the third leaf hasn't started to develop yet.  I guess I am fishing for people to tell me what they think about it.  I probably won't replant them all in one setting.  I can do a variety per day to help keep them from getting mixed up.  My new pace is to do things a lot slower but keep doing things.


It is spring break and we are going to use the days off to do things.  We have different people who have already made requests of our time.  Today, Tuesday and Friday is booked for meeting people.  Wednesday and Thursday will be ours if we don't answer the phone.  I am having a slow Monday and don't think going to Boone for KFC and the Wally Mart will be too tough of an activity.  The neighbor lady gets our first day. 

We are going to be hot today.  The temps are going to reach the low 80's today.  It may get hot but the plants out there are not in a spring mode yet.  I guess it is our second spring thaw.  The air yesterday was cold even though we were in the 70's.  We will bounce back down to cool again tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Coming and Going........

It is a warmer day today with a strong wind from the west.  If feels cold because of the wind chill but being in the 60's is a good thing. Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good day.

Saturday Stuff......

It is another sunny day today and the sun casts a strong light on the dove.  This is a younger one that seems more bashful in behavior compared to its parents who are passive too.

 The temperatures are above normal but we still are in late winter conditions.  There is nothing sprouting up yet as it is too early. The iris just stays green most of the winter if it has leaves around it and the snow covers it before the hard freezes.  The rhizomes are tough roots.

 We saw yesterday two different parents out buying bicycles for their kids at Walmart.  They were first time bikes as the size of them were the smallest.  I don't know if there was a sale but we saw them being taken to van and a car.  The little pink one had its training wheels already installed and a dad was carrying it. The other one, a mom, was probably for a child a few years older. She was trying to get it in a backseat of a car. We will drop in temperatures again soon and they won't want to get out and try to learn to ride them.  My first new bike ended up being two used bikes from a farm sale.  I remember the smaller red one was the one that I used learning the riding skill.  I coasted down in the back of our shed on a dirt road. I was old enough to get it figured out quickly.  Our farm had a lot of dirt roads to travel in order to get to the corn fields and the bike was quiet when you rode in the dirt. I would ride out and back on the 240 acre farm just to have something today.

We are having a quiet Saturday with no plans of any excitement.  The house seems quiet with no television on and the furnace isn't running.  I can hear the cockatiel birds chirping and Barney moving around the house looking for opportunities.  The bird feeders outside are vacant except for a starling once in a while.  The sun is bright but we were cool outside at 34 degrees F.   I wish you all to have a good day and a great weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

Friday......with no Frills.

The good news is that I successfully transplanted this rose to a new location.  It survived the winter.  I now need to get out and chop back the stems down to the green and then I will just watch it.  There really isn't any bad news here other than the creeping Charlie is growing well again this year. This is the William Baffin rose which should do well in this new location. 

My Arizonian brother asked about my snow and if I still had some.  Yes I did have still have some  yesterday and this is the last of it on my property. This was the snow bank that formed in  front of my car in the driveway.  I didn't check this morning but I bet it was melted before morning.

There are a few banks of snow around town yet that had been created by snowplowing but I am certain that I am snow free.  Our weather has been strange, abnormal, as we are suppose to be 26 degrees cooler than what it is.  We will cool down back to normal next week.

It really isn't a pretty sight out there as it is warmer than usual but there isn't any sprouts of peonies or other bulb plants. The grass is a little green. It is too early for all of that. The dead morning glory vines are sad as they hang around below the wren house.  Robins are back but the wrens won't show up for another month.

The hardy geranium that I shared earlier is enjoying the longer days of light.  You can see many blooms are now open in comparison to the one or two that were all I had before.







Spring break is next week so I get off early from work this week.  It was a bonus to come to work today to find out that it is an early out.  I was thinking the today would be a long day as the kids won't want to work for many reasons.  I was cheered to see one of my students putting the abbreviated schedule on the board.  

I am slowed today with my left hand not wanting to work well.  Typing takes more strength and flexibility than one realizes when a couple of fingers cramp up on you.  My wife is feeling so much better.  Not totally out of the woods but oh so much better.  We are looking forward to a week of freedom in the future.  Thanks for stopping by today.

"Danger Will Robinson".............

It may seem like spring out there but it is not.  The tree has no real buds on it yet that it would have if it were spring.  Buds of powdery growth falls to the ground as the buds break open.  I quoted the words "Danger Will Robinson" because of the ensuing dropping of limbs. I watched an old "Lost in Space" show on tv when I was a kid that had a robot that followed the young boy around on their adventures.  The robot would sound an alarm of danger to Will Robinson when he thought the boy was in trouble and could be hurt.

If you look closely there is a broken limb that has fallen into the tree branches.  The old section of the tree to the right has a lot of dead material on it.  When we have a thunderstorm this spring or summer a lot of that will fall to the ground.  It usually drops straight down so I am not worried about it falling on the house.  Falling on people could be a worry if they are out in the rainstorm. I am considering taking the tree down, I hate that I have to, but it may come down during the fall.  It would give the squirrels a little time to relocate and also the racoon that lives there in the winter to go away from the area.

 We received a surprise in the mail a couple of days ago with a few photos.  AJ has turned 2 years old now and they took official pictures of him.  They are such great shots.  I will share individually some later on as I get some editing done.

After finishing my blogging job yesterday two adult Eurasian Collared-doves flew into the feeder area.  They have been seen feeding off the top tray of the feeder in years past but not this time.  They were scavenging the patio floor.

 Along with the two adults a juvenile dove flew in, helping itself to some seed.  I had noticed the day before that there was a lot of sounds of the doves coming from the neighbor's walnut trees but thought I had not seen them in the yard this past few weeks.  They did come yesterday and all three had some good seeds to eat. I shared photos on my Photo a Day blog today also.

A final shot of a small potted rose that I picked up at the Walmart.  It was reduced to nothing in price and I immediately replanted it into real soil. The bloom looks dead as that it what it is. I think that once it normalizes in real soil that it will maybe give me some real red blooms. They had many of these leftover after Valentines Day and I am sure that most of them got tossed in the garbage.  They didn't look very good the few days after the V-Day.

I have a two day sub assignment for the last two days of the week.  It is spring break next week and the teacher had to leave a couple of days early.  It is high school English with all upper grade students. It will make me be glad that spring break is going to happen.

 Thanks for stopping by today.

Wednesday's Wanderings.......

The yucca plant is putting out new leaves.  It is hard to believe that the ground is still semi frozen and it can grow. The dead leaves will be removed a little later as it gets to be closer to summer.

This is a close up of my retreating glacier.  It is full of leaves and is very soft, snow- cone like snow right now.

The glacier is actually the last of the two foot high snow bank that was sitting here.  The curve of the snow is the shape of the front of my car as the snow blew over the car and landed in the space in front of it. I would expect this snow to be gone today with it being close to 70 degrees F.  today.

This is the before shot I took two days ago and I will share the after shot below.

The snow is looking like this as of yesterday afternoon.  The shade of the fence keeps it around longer but the warm temps will eliminate it soon.  I know it will be another month before the daylillies will be blooming.  Also there are daffodils here and a bleeding heart plant to sprout up from its winter sleep. I have a new iris planted here and moved a rose bush here, so there will be lots to see as spring develops.

Back inside again you can see the tomato sprouts are doing well.  No third leaf has formed yet so I won't be moving them into any bigger containers for a while.  I like that part of our day the furnace shuts down as the outside temps are so great that we don't need the furnace. It helps keep the plants from drying out so quickly.

The squirrels sometimes lets the birds feed at the feeder.  It is warm enough now that I may have to quit feeding anybody.  I like being a food source for some of the birds but competition with the squirrels gets to be tiring.  I see morning doves flying around near by but they don't come to the feeders.

I DID SEE A ROBIN (THRUSH) YESTERDAY. I don't have any picture proof at this fact  but robins are hard to shoot at this early spring time.  They will be established soon and I can get a good shot of them.  I wonder if they will put another nest up where they had been last year.

It is going to be another easy going day for us.  I return to the classroom for Thursday and Friday to finish off the week.  It will be spring break at school so I will have the next week off from any real job duties.  We don't quite know how to handle these warm days.  It still gets down to high 30 degrees F.  at night and then warm up to close to 70 each day.  I suppose air conditioning season is around the corner.  Thank you for checking in today on the wild world at Woodward.  Everyone take good care of yourselves.