Sunshine and Flowers

All weekend I've been trying to post to my blogs, but couldn't sign in. Finally this afternoon, I got on. The mysteries of cyberspace. This past week, our daffodils that line the back driveway have been out in full force. They are much prettier now that the ramshackle chain link fence is gone!

On Saturday, we took the morning off and drove up to the Riverlands bird sanctuary on the Mississippi River at Alton. The water levels seemed unusually low, especially since we were having floods a couple of weeks ago. There were lots of white pelicans flying in formation, swimming, flying solo, and probably preparing for a move further north. That's what the speck in the sky in this photo is, a white pelican coming in for a landing on Ellis Bay.

We were thrilled to see many great blue herons lining the edges of the bay, stalking their fish dinner. But we saw only one lone egret, this one, wading in some of the backwater off the bay. I stalked it for several minutes, hoping to get a good profile of it as it also stalked its prey. We had not been out in the sunshine in months and it felt so good.

On the way home from the Riverlands, we stopped at Thies Farm and green- house, which was finally open for the season. This is where we get most of our plants, potting soil, fertilizer and later in the season, locally grown fruits and vegetables. The biggest greenhouse felt like tropical Florida inside, and was lined with flats of summer annuals such as marigolds, impatiens, begonias and coleus. Too early to buy any of these but it was a treat to just look at them.

We did buy two packs of old fashioned pink pansies and one of violet violas and came home and Norm planted two porch boxes for the front of the house. At last it feels like spring.

And I was excused from the jury in the capital murder case, so maybe I'll get to do my civic duty sometime in the future. There's plenty of other projects to keep us busy!