Spring is sprung, grass is (kinda) ris, I know where the birdies is!

This little fella's been singing in the back yard every morning and picking bugs in the front in the afternoon.

Sorry for the crappy picture but I had to get it through the window because every time I opened the front door, he glared at me and hopped away. He probably thought I was going to sic that annoying littleorangeguy on him. The last couple of days, Harry's become a serious birdstalker, running from window to window, bird to bird.

This afternoon, he went to the bedroom in the basement to get a --hmm-- bird's eye view:


He got kinda mad once he knew I was there:

"For God's sake woman, can't a cat do his job in this house?"

Suitably chastened, I left him to it. Look at that tail go (he was still mad at me):


A brief turn in the garden showed just what bulby things are starting to come up through the damp ground and leaf mulch: crocuses (croci??) and daffodils.

The little red leaves are the four o'clocks, or evening primrose, which will shoot off lovely little yellow flowers later in the summer. They were one of the very few perennials --along with a fragrant and resiliant pink rose, a sedum, retro orange daylilies (also popping up), and a thicket of periwinkle-- that we found in the garden when we moved here almost 5 years ago.

The flowering quince we planted two years ago is promising to flower all up and down its stems, and Teya's lilac, which now shelters Bodil as well, is smack full of fat green buds just waiting to turn into dark purple trumpets of blooms.

It's hard not to feel your heart lift when you see the garden, which we planted while heartbroken after Teya's death, come back to life. Or when you walk home to hear --and see-- a romantically-inclined cardinal flying like crazy between the Norway maple in the front yard and the Silver in the back. Speaking of which, it's been assessed by the tree people and deemed healthy. It could use a good pruning, so that's what it will get, and we'll continue to enjoy its shade.