Spring!

Our tulips are quite lovely this year!

Baby birds

House finches built their nest in our window sill in the sunroom.  We watched them build their nest, lay an egg every day for five days, hatch, and then fledge.  All five seem to have survived!

Cherry blossoms!

Cherry blossom season in DC this year was beautiful, but rainy... the blossoms lasted for less than a week.  Still, though, it's a beautiful time of year, and I'm glad my parents were in town to see it!

Rain, rain go away....

please don't wash our road away...

It's raining really, really hard. We're supposed to get more than two inches of rain today. Poor Shasta, who hates the rain, has been refusing to go to the bathroom while she's getting rained on, so she's been antsy all day. To give you a hint about how much she hates being rained on, her leash clasp slid off her collar while we were taking these pictures, and being the lab mix she is, she took off for the wilderness - we ran inside to drop off the camera and find some treats to bribe her with, and she bolted in the open door behind us. Last week, when it was merely drizzling, it took more than two hours to catch her and bring her in when she bolted out the door I had stupidly left open.

This is why our house is on stilts.

Our neighbor's yard...

Our other neighbor's yard...

This is the border between our yard and our neighbor's yard.

To really show you, watch this:




and this:





Gotta say, though - even though we're probably going to wash into the lake in the next hour or two, at least we've got green leaves, spring flowers, and this rain, while drenching, is taking place in 70 degree weather....

Washington's cherry blossom festival

I'd never seen the cherry blossom festival before, and while I'd heard that it was beautiful, words cannot describe how cool it actually is. There are thousands and thousands of trees- all different kinds of cherry trees - all blooming at once. It's magical, and pictures absolutely don't do it justice.

So pretty

Jefferson Memorial

The Washington Memorial rising out of the fluffy pink flowers...

Sunset over the trees and the memorial

Flowers, flowers, everywhere!

Rainy Saturday randomness

We're terrible at being lazy. We're taking today to just chill and relax- it's absolutely pouring drenching rain, so inside sounds better than the wine festival we were planning on making it to. So far instead we've slept in (got up at 8:30), made strawberry jam (yum), made cookies (yum), made hummus (yum), cleaned the house, watered the plants, Jim's working on a piece to sell at a silent auction, walked the dog twice, created a menu for Easter (yum), finished two loads of laundry...

Butter almond cookies with strawberry jam (and strawberry jam)

Remember those tiny little seedlings? Well, they grew faster than I thought they would, and now they're way past ready to plant, but it's not warm enough yet, and they're starting to flower....

Bowl o' deliciousness

In other news, a bear tried to break into Jim's car! We had put the trash in there to take to the dump since we don't have trash pick-up, but I guess we should have taken it earlier....

Bears should wipe their paws before crawling all over the truck...

We also caught the biggest spider ever! It was in my laptop bag. Hard to tell, but the body is almost an inch long.

We haven't shown a picture of Guinners in a while - he's still a giant cuddler.

Plus, he's shedding up a storm

Our friend D visited- poor girl, we thought we were going on a "short hike" but it was a 7 mile trek - straight downhill for three and a half miles, and then straight uphill for three and a half miles. But the view was totally worth it! This is Overlook Falls in Shenandoah National Park.

Overlook Falls from the top...

Gorgeous and crazy lichens...

We came up into a cloud. It was neat.

Signs of spring

Robins, spring peepers, flowering daffodils, warm weather, etc. - spring has well and truly arrived. We spent the whole afternoon in a t-shirt painting our furniture orange, yellow and green.

Really. It's awesome.

Last weekend, I started seeds for our garden:


Look at all those little baby plants!
Oh wait, now you can see them.
Here's another closeup.

I also repotted my plants. This would be boring if it weren't for this philodendron- which is taking over the world.
There was no dirt in this pot. This is all it. Only roots. It's like a crazy X-files plant that will eat our brains in our sleep.

Holy Robins, Batman

I saw 20 robins in the neighbor's yard today! Hooray for Spring!

Hiking!

Shasta-dog is Queen of the Hill in Rothrock...

I never really noticed the gorgeous purple-green color of small pine cones before.


Hemlock wooly adelgid at the Thousand Steps trail where we went hiking with our guest, a French grad student in Germany.
The view at the top of the Thousand Steps trail.

And a fence lizard at the top of the Thousand Steps trail! So cute.

Red Buds!

Spring is in the air!