Out Came the Sun and Melted all the Snow

With apologies to the Itsy Bitsy Spider, we are on kind of a roller coaster with the weather here. This morning it rained; tomorrow will be sunny and 60s; Thursday it will rain, etc. The pictures on this blog were taken before the Sunday morning snow. The apricot pink hyacinths always surprise me. They come up next to a clump of crocus foliage and start blooming before I know they are there.

The daffodils were at the top of their game. The snow really flattened them but today the bed is dominated by yellow. The white flowers were too fragile for the cold and have all dried up. But we have more varieties coming into flower even as I write.

The goldfinches are molting and visiting the thistle feeder by the back window fairly often. I keep trying to get a good picture but so far all I have are a series of yellow blurs. The grackles took over the other feeder so we have let it stay empty. The cardinals, sparrows and other birds seem to be finding enough forage on their own. We give them all fresh water daily which seems to be a key to having birds visit the yard.

I haven't blogged as much because I've been playing with fabric. I'm finishing a baby quilt, putting the binding on a twin size quilt, and working myself up to try machine quilting with a fancy new foot I ordered for my very basic Kenmore sewing machine. I'll post pictures when I finish. Norm is doing his best to cope with spring allergies. The hardwood trees are in bloom and they seem to get to him. (I used to have an elm allergy, and then I was OK until the pine trees and locust trees released their pollen. There aren't enough elms around to bother me any more, but the first week of May, I'd better watch out for the others. Oak pollen, too, irritates both of us and guess what we have in the front yard? We'll know it's blooming when the entire asphalt driveway turns bright yellow!)

Our friend Dave, aka The Persnickety Crafter (TPC) is working his magic on some small repairs around the house this week. He has finished the ceiling in the downstairs powder room, where earlier he took out a piece of moldy drywall and stopped a slow leak coming from a vent pipe. He also has installed a handrail for the basement stairs and is getting ready to put new rubber stair treads on those stairs, since the old ones were brittle and hole-y. Then he'll install a new handrail to extend the one that is already on part of the first flight of the stairs to the second floor--there is a gap in railings and we often have to juggle and reach for the other side. Now that we are getting a little older, we like to have something to hold on to. Eventually there will be a coat of paint on the new installations and the basement steps, too. So that's what we are into right now.