Very mysterious!!!

This is so strange. Last evening about 6:30 I went out to the machine shed to feed my cats... had the oven heating for pizza so didn't even take the time to pet any of them... was away from the house for less than 5 minutes (and even only that long because it was slow picking my way around the muddy heifer tracks). When I came back in, I noticed tracks of still-wet packed mud on the floor going into the kitchen. I assumed Hubby had stepped into the house for something, since he was in the yard when I went out. But when he came in a bit later and I pointed out "his" muddy tracks, he claimed innocence!

Then I thought perhaps our son had stopped in for a quick visit to show off his new "toy", and finding me not in the house, had just left again. However, a quick phone call to him came up with another claim of innocence!

A closer look at the driveway showed what looked like fresh vehicle tracks turned up toward the garage, so apparently someone HAD indeed been there and left again. But WHO???

The really strange thing was that whoever it was either didn't bother to ring the doorbell, or did and the doorbell didn't work, because neither of my cats seemed spooked when I came in. And Willow ALWAYS shoots immediately for under the bed when the doorbell rings. And since neither of them seemed alarmed, it seemed as if WHOEVER it was possibly didn't even say anything, because an unknown voice would have also scared them. Or else it was someone they know!

Hubby thought perhaps it was the neighbor across the field, because he'd noticed their garage door open at one point. So curiosity got the best of me, and I called over there this morning to find out, although I couldn't imagine him having stepped clear into the kitchen like that unless it was an emergency of some kind. Well, his wife is quite sure he's innocent, too, although she's going to double-check when he gets home tonight.

So now I have no idea WHO or WHY. I am totally baffled. And yes, it really BUGS ME! If you have any clues or ideas, do let me know!

??? WHODUNNIT ???

P.S. I suppose in keeping with the theme of this blog, I should have taken pics of the evidence, but unfortunately I wasn't thinking of blogging about it at the time. So picture in your mind about 3 steps worth of packed mud, and fresh vehicle tracks in the gravel. ;-)

Oh, NO!!!

"I'm thinkin' about headin' back south!"

"I'm runnin' for cover!!!"

(Note the craters at the edge of the garden. Heifer prints.)

Every now and then...

... everybody ends up with a bad hair day.

(And sometimes it's self-inflicted.)

Poll Results

The results of the poll "Do you think Courtney is adorable?" turned out to be 100% "YES!" Imagine that. ;-)

Thanks for voting! And for humoring a silly (though not prejudiced at all) Grandma G.

"One of these days I'll get you!"

Watch out, Wispy!!! :-)

(Notice Willow's feeling pretty safe in the tower yet.)

Grace, I'm not gonna do it!

Even though we had 3-4... 5(?) inches of new snow last night, I am NOT taking or posting any more "frosty winter photos"! Bad enough to have to look out the window today, without having the yucky stuff messing up my blog when it's supposed to be SPRING with things turning GREEN. Sorry, Grace... not even for you. ;-)

The exercising bookworm

Notice how good she is at multi-tasking... reading and exercising at the same time. Nice leg lifts, huh?

The little sounds at the end are "Woof, woof"... we've been working on what a puppy says. And she doesn't care if she's looking at a kitty book at the time. ;-)

Exercise time

"Grandma makes me hold these weights in my hands and do exercises."

More for the bird lovers

On the way back from taking the bald eagle pics, we drove past a little pond that had a lot of ducks on the open water. I managed to get a quick photo...

...before they flew away.

Checking with my Kaufman bird book (thanks J&A!), I found the ducks to be Lesser Scaup. Yeah, weird name, huh? They don't nest around here. They were on their way to western Canada.

More Easter pics

My favorite:

Love those tippy-toes!

The Easter outfit was transformed to Piglet.

Here she is with her ears on. :-)

Bald eagles!

Bald eagles don't nest around here, but occasionally (rarely, actually) we'll see them passing through. Late Saturday afternoon, hubby called me on his way home, saying he'd seen some and asking if I wanted to take pictures of them. Of course I jumped at the chance, since I'd only seen ONE in my life before (last year right in our own trees here, in fact). So he picked me up and away we went. They were only a couple miles from our home. I did manage to get some decent pictures, considering I was trying to hurry, fearing they'd fly away, and the battery was low in my camera, so it was sluggish. But even if I hadn't gotten photos, I'd have been excited just to have seen them! There were about 8 of them.

Happy Easter!

HE IS RISEN!

(Unfortunately, the above photo was not taken this morning. I wish we'd had that much sunshine today, but we had more little white thingies than we did sunshine.)

I hope all of you have a beautiful Easter, celebrating with family and/or friends. And I hope the reason we celebrate Easter... the resurrection of our Lord... touches each of your hearts with special meaning.

On a little more secular/traditional note... you know, the Easter bunnies and chickies thing... I have to show you what I made for Courtney for Easter. In my blog reading, I happened to come across a pattern for making a stuffed bunny. I still had some pieces left of the Modern Flora fabric Jess designed (see it here), so I decided to use some of each piece to make "Flora". Here's how she turned out.

Go ahead... you can laugh. Jess thought it was hilarious! :-)))

An evening update:

"Such lovely fabrics!"

Up

See how she practices her Word of the Day!

Poll Results

The results of the poll "Do you think Daylight Savings Time is a good thing?" are as follows:

• Yes (5 votes)
• No (2 votes)
• Can't decide (0 votes)
• Doesn't matter to me (0 votes)

Well, at least everyone has a definite opinion! Fortunately most think it's a good thing, because it looks like we're stuck with it, like it or not. ;-)

I'll always remember when we first started having DST many years ago... my grandparents on my dad's side of the family refused to change their clocks. Of course they only made things harder for themselves (and us), because they had to think twice about everything that got scheduled, to make sure they did things at the right time, since everything was off an hour. It was all "your time" and "my time", just like they were in a different time zone. Funny. :-)

Thanks for voting!

The walking Piglet

Okay, I'm tired of looking at those muddy pictures. Bad enough that I have to see the mess every time I look out the windows. And the dark, dreary day today doesn't help any. Let's look at something much brighter and nicer to the eyes... let's see how steady little Piglet is on her feet by now!

I think she's a bit disappointed that Grandma shoved everything on the night stand out of her reach... and removed that Kleenex box that she was so quick to try and empty... and unplugged the cord from the socket at the side of the chest of drawers before she could do it herself. But it doesn't deter her from looking for other places to check out! :-)

It's spring!

So why do we have a Winter Storm Watch for tonight through tomorrow? Aargh. (Late afternoon update: It has been downgraded to a Snow Advisory. Still up to 5 inches possible, though. Yuck!) (Friday morning update: Snow missed us again - YAY!!)

But, the calendar does say it's the first day of spring, and the birds must agree. Our lawn was covered with robins early this morning. Here's a not-very-good photo of one of them:

I also saw one blackbird perched at the top of a tree and many geese flying overhead, and I heard a meadowlark singing this morning. I also heard a killdeer last night.

That's not all I heard last night. At about 11:15 I heard heifers bellering, sounding suspiciously like they were not where they were supposed to be. A dreaded look out the window told me my suspicions were correct. They were tearing around all over the place... kicking up their heels from spring fever, I guess. :-(

We have plenty of mud from melting snow as it is, and the ground is thawing and soft. So this is what it looks like after dozens of hefty heifers had been dancing across the lawn and yard.

Nothing like a little early plowing, huh? Here one slid down the slope through my sprouting sedum.

At least they sorta spared the lawn directly in front of the house, but they covered everything else pretty thoroughly. Thank goodness for a son and a 4-wheeler, or they'd still be running around. 1:00 a.m. was late enough to be out chasing the dumb critters as it was.

"Hey, it wasn't us!"

Just for fun...

Try the typing speed test by clicking on the image or the "Speed test" link in the left column on this page.

Here's a tip... when you get to the end of a group of words, either hit your spacebar or your 'Enter' key to continue to the next group of words. And you can take the test as many times as you want. Hopefully the more times you take it the faster you'll get. To be honest, 72 was NOT my first score. :-)

Grandma's little Piglet

"Courtney, can you smile like the Piglet on your tummy?"

"Wanna try again?"

"One more time?"

"YAY! Good job!"

(Doesn't she just melt your heart?)

Did you notice I have to strap her down nowadays to get a good picture of her? ;-) Her newfound mobility has her going faster all the time!! Just kidding... I didn't really strap her down just for taking photos. She had just finished eating. But it did work out well. :-)

Not camera shy!

Since there doesn't seem to be a bright spot in all the new whiteness (YUCK!) outside this morning, let's look at this sweet brightness from inside the house last Tuesday. :-)

Now I'm just hoping we don't get so much additional whiteness that she can't make it to Grandma G's house tomorrow. We're under a winter storm watch for tonight. DOUBLE YUCK!!

Bright spots

The snow really melted fast last week - YAY!! But with the cloudiness, dirty snow, brown foliage and mud, it hasn't been too pretty out there.

However, I discovered a bright spot one morning. Can you see it?

Look a little closer...

I like the way he(she?) holds his tail up over his back. I wonder why they do that. Anybody know? Dale???

Yesterday I discovered some more bright spots. My tulips are coming up!

I did see one robin so far. Hopefully there will be more soon. I wonder how many times they'll get their tails snowed on before winter is finally over! Sounds like the first shot will start tonight. Yuck.

Amaryllis - final

I hate to have to report this, but the remaining buds on my last amaryllis have "fizzled". I have no clue why, but they're just kind of withering and aren't going to open. Bummer. But at least you got to see what one flower on that plant looked like.

Just for fun, here's a photo from a couple years ago, when all three were blooming at once.

And that concludes the amaryllis reports for this year. Hopefully we'll soon have spring flowers outdoors to photograph!

Poll Results

The results of the poll "Do you have a blog?" are as follows:

• Yes! (4 votes)
• No, I'm content viewing others' (2 votes)
• No, but I'm considering one (0 votes)

Twice as many bloggers as non-bloggers! Yeah, it does seem to be 'the thing' to do nowadays for an awful lot of people. Hey, it's fun! :-)

Thanks for voting!

After a week's practice...

Thinking spring

I worked on a little project last week, and after seeing it completed, I decided it looks very spring-y! Most of you probably know this, but Jess designed some fabric, and it was printed just a few weeks ago. You can see what it all looks like here. She sent me sample pieces of each design. Of course, being the proud mom that I am, I knew I wanted to make something out of some of it. I decided on bathroom curtains, since I needed new ones anyway, and my bathroom is where the fabric colors would go the best.

I ordered some more of the "Herb" fabric, used my old curtains as a pattern, and trimmed the new curtains with the "Sprig" sample Jess had given me. Here's the result:

The colors in this second photo aren't accurate because of the artificial lighting... they really look better than that in person. But at least you can see how the curtains help tie in the floor with the rest of the room.

I like them. They're cheerful and they make me happy. I smile whenever I walk past the bathroom and look in there. :-)

Oh, yeah... that's Wispy on the vanity top. Every time I go into the bathroom, she thinks I should make the faucet drip so she can get a drink. ;-)

Meanwhile, back at the recycle center...

Courtney is by far my most cheerful, diligent, and meticulous worker! She makes sure that all papers are shredded small enough that no one could ever read them again. No identity theft from this recycle center! And notice that she does not let passing distractions keep her from doing her job.

Amaryllis 7

This is how the first bloom on the last amaryllis looked on Thursday, when it was at its peak. The other buds haven't begun opening yet, maybe because the room they're in is quite cool... because of the COLD weather we've been having this past week! I'm hoping for several buds to open at once, for one more lovely photo. Stay tuned.

Poll Results

The results of the poll "Have you ever had an amaryllis?" are as follows:

• Yes, I have 1 or more now (1 vote)
• Yes, in the past (1 vote)
• No, but I want one! (0 votes)
• No, don't care to (3 votes)
• Want one, but afraid I'd kill it (1 vote)

Thanks, everyone, for voting! And to the person who wants one but is afraid he/she'd kill it... go for it! They're very hard to kill! My oldest one got quite chewed up by a dog one summer, but it's still blooming many years later! (The dog did not fare nearly as well.)

Snowflakes

The snowflakes that came down yesterday morning were so light and fluffy that you could see each one individually where it landed. And they would blow away with a little puff of a breath.

BUT, are we tired of snow (and COLD) yet???

It never ceases to amaze me...

...how much a baby learns and masters in that first year or two of life!

It seems like just yesterday that Courtney was making her first attempts at crawling.

(That was actually October 2nd.)

But this was yesterday!

"Are you watching me, Grandma? Here I go!!"

From the basement window

A junco again. Gee, it'll be so nice when spring gets here and there are other birds to photograph!

Look at the green grass here (it's next to the south side of the house)... maybe spring isn't too far off! However, the white you see in the background of the first pic is still snow. It has been melting a little lately, though this being March... well... anything could happen yet.

Curls

Courtney's hair curls right after it's washed. She must've gotten the curls from her daddy... but I don't know where he got 'em!

Another shot of the curls as she brushes her teeth. ;-)

Too bad I couldn't get a nice shot of the little flip she had going in the back. :-)

Amaryllis 6

Here's how the final amaryllis looks this morning.

Lots of potential with all the buds!

The first flower's not quite fully open yet, but getting there.