5 Miles

Wow, did that last week disappear fast! After flying the kites last Saturday, we had 4 days of cold and rain.  We spent the days inside and doing various things around the house.  By Wednesday we were ready for the rains to be done, but it had gotten pretty chilly out! Thursday we enjoyed some time outside and by Friday it was in the 80s! We joined several friends at the park after preschool (here are pictures of that for those not on Facebook) . Saturday we spent the day doing yard work. Sunday we recovered from all the work, relaxed, and got ready for James’ mom to visit. We’ve had a nice time hanging out with her the last few days, but tomorrow she leaves to go back home.  I’ll update the adventures we’ve had with her tomorrow.

Here’s are some highlights of the week/weekend of yard work:

This is one of two shrubs we got last summer for the fall colors–but I’ve been LOVING the fun flowers they have this spring! Fun surprise…it’s called a fothergilla shrub if you’re interested.

The boys played/raced down the drive way while I weeded and weeded and weeded. (And after 4 days in the 80s and more rain, I have MORE saplings to weed. We’ve had SO many of tiny maple trees sprouting up, last year must have been a bumper crop of helicopter seeds!)

This Flowering Almond is a start I got from my dad, who started his from my Great Grandmother (and that start went from Indiana down to Texas with us, and then he brought another start back to Indiana when we moved up here 15 years ago). I’m VERY excited it’s doing well, for the family heritage as well as the  beautiful pink flowers it produces.

This tulip with the pink rim was a surprise–I thought it’d be just white.

Saturday, one of the baby bunnies we have living in our yard (or the neighbor’s, we’re not quite sure) appeared. Alex is feeding it some grass.

James picked it up and the boys got to pet it. It was shaking so bad! He let it go, it hopped over a bit and then made an odd noise. We checked a bit later and it had died. When Alex asked me later “Mommy, why did the baby bunny die?” I told him it was because they have tiny hearts and if they get too scared it can cause their hearts to stop working. Alex then said “The bunny died because Daddy picked it up?”  Well, yeah, but I wasn’t going to say that!  The neighbor killed another, but the boys have seen another one hopping around. They were eating my plants so I wasn’t TOO upset to lose the two we’ve already lost, we’ll see how this third one does.

James also borrowed a device to make getting dandelions out of the grass easier. He’d pick them up and the boys had a great time picking them up and throwing them on the driveway (that was to make getting rid of them easier).  That roped off area is where we have grass seed growing.

We met some friends from church and went to the zoo Thursday. It was a beautiful day and I’m so glad we did it.  While it was Spring Break and rather busy, it wasn’t too bad. Will and I had a great time. Alex started off well, got bored during the dolphin show, and spent the rest of the morning whining about wanting to see the lions and elephants.

Here are the new bear cubs our zoo is promoting…they were pretty cute.

Cute boys in the flowers!

FINALLY, for Alex, the elephants. This one kept waving at us and doing fun things with his trunk. Alex didn’t care, he was ready for lunch.

 

After lunch we went over to the butterfly exhibit and the gardens.

I LOVED the wonderful smell, and I have to have these next year.

And I loved these color combinations, so this is for me to remember for next year as well.

…gets really dirty together?

Today the boys helped James put compost in the front flower beds.

They had fun taking the compost and putting it in the wagon with their shovels.

And they helped with spreading it around the flowers.

While they did that, I weeded. We have a bumper crop of wild garlic I’m trying to get rid of.  And I took pictures.   Here’s a close up of some of the flowers (the tulips are new, not what I expected when I bought them, but I really like them…seriously, I bought a pack on clearance that was a mix of  3 types of bulbs, purple, white and another color. I think these are them…or maybe we’ve had them and I just forgot? Possible too! There are still some comeing  up, so we’ll see.).

 

They open wide in the warmth of the day and are all yellow on the inside.  And we have my spring favorites below.

Once again it’s time for me to document our annual blooming of our crocuses–the first flowers we see.

This is probably the same clump I’ve taken pictures of each year …Maybe, last year, I might have changed things up and shown these or the white ones, but they’re usually late bloomers so they don’t get posted on the blog. But the few warm days meant these guys all appeared between Friday and Sunday morning (I noticed them this morning when I went out and got the paper). 

I tried to go look in the archives to find the previous years, but I don’t really have the time and I wasn’t as clear with my titles as I was this year.  (Hint for me–use obvious titles, not cute ones, if you want to find things for the future!) (EDITED TO ADD: Last year I posted pictures of them on March 20th. Now I want to go look and see if we’re just early this year or last last year.)  Last fall we put lots of daffodils and tulips in the yard…this fall I’m going to get LOTS of crocuses, so next year I can have a few new pictures–since you can bet I’ll keep up the tradition of putting up my first flowers of spring pictures.

 

The yellow flowers were first sited last Friday. They’ve been curled up tight since then (we’ve had cold weather and 3 full days of rain!). Today they opened up again, and even though they’re a bit ragged looking, I felt they deserved to be put up here as our “First Flowers Blooming of Spring” honors.  Our faithful purple crocouses opened up again today as well.  Will kept trying to tell me we needed to water the flowers or the small trees we have growing. Did he not see the 3 days of rain? 

In celebration of the first day of spring, we were able to enjoy a 50 degree day with sunshine. And enjoy it we did, since we’re looking at lots more rain and clouds in the next few weeks.