Springtime moments...

new lamb

planting blueberry bushes

can you see the little chipmunk
sitting on this catalpa tree?

fuzzy caterpillar sashaying across the top of our
 field guide

mud pies!

the pony of her dreams

first harvest from Toucie's garden

sorry, dude. she just can't help loving you

racing with the billy goat

our young Red Buckeye tree

jumping the ditch!

Mado in a sidewalk art competition

The cicadas are here!!

they look so exotic...like jewels

...and there are gazillions of them everywhere...singing

I used to find and play with the left-behind shells when I was a kid.

best book EVER about the phenomenon of 17 year cicadas!

Ha! I guess I'm not the only kid to ever think of playing with them!

The Barn....

May Day Preparations

Gathering local flora for our May baskets.

Using plastic cups like last year. I melted holes for the ribbon to thread through using a wood-burning tool.

We're ready to sneak these over to our neighbors' homes as soon as dusk falls!
Happy May Day!

Cherry Blossom Festival

flowering cherry

Not very many pictures from the Sakura Festival this year...it was a rainy day :(

The next day the sun peeked out again and we were able to enjoy the beautiful blossoms of the season.

Spring Equinox!

Welcome Spring!

Folks around here have started mowing their lawns again...but not us. Look at this tapestry of "weeds"! So much more beautiful than "lawn"!

We collected some of those sweet violets to decorate our traditional Equinox Cake...you can see last year's version here.

New babies to celebrate the season with :)

Ahhhh...the lilacs...now we know it's spring!

To mark this beautiful spring day, we gathered with friends and took a hike into the nearby woods to picnic near the river.

Yummy!
(the menu was :
Curried Tofu Salad
Tunisian Pressed Sandwiches
Raw Veggies and Hummus
Fresh Fruit, bread and raw Goat Cheese)


But perhaps the most wonderful part of the day was that we found the woods overrun with ephemeral wildflowers!!

Strange visitors....

Earlier this spring, the girls and I returned home on afternoon to find one of our cats standing at the base of the dogwood tree staring up into its branches...silly cat. No, wait...What is that?

Can you see it? How about now:

A groundhog??!! And that was how we learned that groundhogs do not necessarily spend all their time on the ground.

In the few weeks that have followed we have met several other visitors here in our own yard.