weekend with family

Obviously being back to blogging doesn't mean a post every day ;)  but I did want to share a few photos of Brooklyn & Landon as they were our house guests for the weekend.  Our time together was a weekend of beautiful warm weather so we spent most of it outdoors.

Brooklyn arranged the fairy garden this year!  Grandma is still getting used to it but also felt it was great to change it up a little...

Landon enjoyed every minute outside playing with as he says "the pup dogs, Hersh Bar & Maya", riding on the ranger with anyone who will give him a ride, riding the little battery operated scooter & car and of course the "horsey" swing.

Since it was so nice out it was a perfect day for a project.  After falling a few times on my arched bridge when it was wet - I decided I wanted a safe flat bridge as design isn't as important as my bones.

Brooklyn and her parents helped Bapa Jeff build the bridge...

and Landon and her were the first to use it to feed the fish!

First Blossoms...

The first blossoms of spring are starting - today I noticed the first tulips in the front landscape.

I liked how these 3 were all in a straight line.

The forsythia have been blooming all week but looking pretty ragged from the past 3 days being very windy...

and I am hoping the next few days are better since the magnolia is almost ready to bloom.

We didn't go on our annual "finding spring" motorcycle trip this March so the early blossoms are much more exciting for me this year! Instead we took a February trip to the Florida Keys and I will show some of those photos in the coming days. Hope you enjoy.

I'm Back to Blogging!

After almost 20 months of silence on this blog I have decided I missed it! Two years ago I was overwhelmed with the daily "to-do's" and squeezing every spare minute I had into those 4 beautiful grand babies of mine so I let the blog go dormant. I also found I left my camera go dormant as well and that was not something I intended to do. Taking photos of the beauty around me is something I am striving to get back to but then the question was - what do I do with all these photos? The answer came last night as I sat taking way too many photos of the juncos in the late afternoon light...and it was start the blog back up :) I hope there are still a few followers out there...

This post is about the shy little gray bird called a Junco. They are one of my favorite birds because they never fail to remind me of my dad. He didn't know their real name but called them gray snowbirds and he predicted winter and spring's arrival with them. He always said when they arrived in the fall it was going to snow and winter would be here soon and it wasn't going to stay spring-like weather (no matter what the calendar says) until they finally left. Every day I would see them go about their feeding and getting water at the pond but never more than 10 or so at a time...that is until yesterday. It was 70 degrees and calm yesterday with a forecast of a south wind and 80 today and I literally had dozens in the garden at one time. Usually they took flight at the first sight of me but yesterday they were too busy feeding and drinking so I knew they must be leaving soon and went and grabbed my camera for some late afternoon shots (needed the right light to capture the light in their eyes). I'm glad I did because they seemed to have left overnight, not a one to be spotted today. I hope you enjoy these photos and the blog posts to come.

This last photo is of a hairy woodpecker who along with his family and smaller cousins, the downy woodpeckers, are pecking the death out of my serviceberry tree! Nothing seems to be deterring them but I will keep trying.