a walk through spring

This is a post that I started last year but never finished, so here it is (forward posted 3/22/10):

I took a long walk in the garden today, and enjoyed all the signs of spring. This is the first day where it all feels truly like spring is here!

The hill behind our house:

A close up of the hill behind our house, with giant pondorosas (they look small from this perspective:


The hillside behind our house, and our neighbour's poperty. Notice the bright colors of the dogwood, riverbirch, and willows by the creek:


We planted some plants around our front entrance, around the mailbox, etc. last summer. It was hard for the plants to get through the hot summer and we lost a couple, but it's gratifying to see them growing prettily this spring. The next four pictures are from our mailbox bed.

A purple Aubrieta flower:


White Aubrieta:


A view from above of our mailbox bed. There are a few Aubrietas, 'Karl Forester' grass, and Butterfly Bush:


Purple and white Aubrieta, nestled against the stone border:


A panorama from behind our neighbour's house:


The hillside just down the road from our house, with beautiful geological features:


All41, playing with Abby:




River Birch tassles by the creek:


Sleeping grapevines:




An old sage, that has grown floppy and woody. I decided to chop the heck out of it and see what happened. The next few pictures show how sad it looks (it grew lots of full leaves after this, cool!):






Abby's watching me longingly from her enclosure:


Close ups of our cherry tree's flower buds and unfurling leaves:






Daffodil by the house:


We have lots of violets growing next to the house, and into the grass:


The next two pics are of dogwood flower buds. One is pink, and one is white (can't remember which is which):




Ornamental Maple buds:


Double white Lilac leaf buds (took this out of the yard of an elderly lady who died and her house was used as a training place for the Master Gardeners. The silly thing hasn't bloomed yet, after years of happily growing in my yard. Ah well, some day:


English Walnut leaf buds:


English Walnut leaf buds and the beginning of a tassle:


Feverfew:


Jonesy loves to snuggle in the leaves under the Crambe in the bed in front of the house:


Close up of Catmint leaves (This is a start from my husband's aunt's garden, I believe it is Nepeta grandiflora):

Another couple pictures of the maple flowers (early and late morning, respectively), they're just heading past their prime:

Yay, spring is finally here!!!

Yesterday was the first official day of spring. We've actually had quite a few sunny days for a while, and there have been a few times that I've felt a hint of spring here and there.

But this morning, I felt it. I saw the maple blooming outside the dining room windows, and went out to take a few pictures before going to church. The sky was blue with some wispy white clouds, and the maple flowers were beautiful set against the brilliant color. The sun was bright, and I could hear a bunch of birds twittering happily. I've heard birds a bit already, mostly chickadees. But this is the first time that I've noticed that many at once. Everything was so happy, and it filled me with hope and goodness. :-)

Maple flowers seem a bit insignificant at first, but if you look at them, they cover the branches of the tree with fluffiness. The light shines right through the little balls of stamens, and makes them glow like light through fiberglass. When the breeze blows through them, they dance. Maple flowers are pretty much the first things to bloom around our area, so it's always exciting to see them.

So far this year, I haven't seen any honey bees. Even though it's sunny, it's not very warm so I guess they haven't wanted to venture out yet. They love maple tree flowers. There will be so many bees harvesting the flowers, that the whole tree just hums and wiggles and shakes. :-D

the day after

Well, the yard is a big muddy mess. My daughter went out today to walk around with our dog, and came in with her pants covered in mud. Most of the yard is bare, although there is still some thin layers of snow here and there, especially near the creek.

I've edited my last post, adding an "after" picture at the end so that you can see the differences.

storm time again....yup, it's january of course!

I took some pictures this morning of our lovely 14-15 inches of snow outside, and I'm glad I did - cause it's mostly all gone! I've never seen anything like it. It's been nice and snowy (12-18 inches consistently on the ground) since after Thanksgiving time, snowing off and on again regularly to keep that nice, pretty white blanket. The temperature's been low, anywhere between -2 to hovering around freezing, but mostly somewhere in between. We've had some nice sunny days, but nothing has affected this winter blanket.

Well, tonight the wind started blowing and gusting and sounding like a big semi going down the road outside of our house. I always hate when this happens, as our house is in the middle of a wind tunnel affect created by our canyon. We checked the temperature this evening and was very surprised to see that it was 53 degrees. I mentioned at the time, that this must be a chinook.

Well, the whole family was watching a movie in our bedroom (which is a corner room towards the highway) tonight, trying to ignore the unsettling winds. My parents had just called to ask if we had power, as I guess a pole had gone down above us (my dad is a volunteer fire fighter up our canyon). We were fine, however, and went on watching the movie. Soon after, this bright flash happened, and the electricity went off. It flickered back on again, and then everything went black, as the whole room lit up with this brilliant white light, sorta with sparks as well, and we heard loud popping noises (not sure how to describe it). It felt like the light was almost falling towards us and I had a sudden fear that an electricity pole was falling on top of us or something (although I don't think that would be possible thinking about it afterwards, as the poles are too far away from the house). But it created a great panic, with all of us tripping over each other to run out of the room. It was quite exciting. Fortunately, the lights came back on almost immediately. We tried to peer out in the dark, but it didn't look like anything seemed to be out of place. My husband immediately called 911 to report what had happened.

Everything was very disconcerting, and we felt very nervous. I hate our periodic wind storms, that shake the whole house a few times a year. The worst one was of course two years ago this month, when the winds were up to 130 miles per hour and tore up so many trees and ripped up most roof shingles and took out some people's windows and small buildings/trailers, etc. The wind had sounded like a train going by right outside my window during that storm. Part of our neighbour's shed roof had managed to fly a couple hundred feet across our lawn and into the creek, made up of four 4x4's nailed together for beams, and sheet metal. Tonight, I started having flashbacks. That sort of nervousness/fear is hard to shake, when you realize your home could potentially not protect you from the elements outside. We American's have become very soft and take things for granted nowadays! :-p

We got a call soon afterwards from my dad, who was just outside our house on the highway, driving the fire truck. He said that it looked like some cable lines had snapped and when they were whipping around in the wind, then touched the electrical wires and arced. They moved them to the side to wait for repair people later. We still have tv and internet, however, because we use buried fiber. We were fortunate it wasn't worse, and had a good prayer with the kids, thanking God for His protection. My dad thought that the winds felt like they were around 50 mph. Later on, my husband checked the wind report for above us, at Mission Ridge, and it was reported that the gusts were up to 115 mph.

I took a peek out our back sliding doors, and realized that most of the deep snow from the past couple months was almost gone. That was a shock. I've never seen snow disappear that fast before, within just a couple hours, from this warmth and wind. Wow. I could see large bare spots, and the patches of snow that were left seemed to be an inch or less deep. I'm wondering what it will all look like in the morning. The gusts were very strong and loud, but I braved my fears to snap a photo into the blackness. The real trick was afterwards, when I had the camera on the tripod still and tried to stick it outside sorta to video the wind. It started blowing around in my grasp, as the wind tried to pick it up and take it away from me. It sounded like something very loud and roaring was rushing towards me, so I thankfully closed the sliding windows quickly.


Picture from this morning, with 14-15 inches of snow:


Picture at about 10pm tonight, with maybe an inch or so of snow (the deck to the right of this picture is completely bare)

Here is the next day picture, almost totally bare, except for some thin patches near the creek. (the yard to the right is mostly bare, but this picture is facing the lower part of the yard towards the creek, which is always colder.)