April 15, 2011

Milk-White Flowers

The Garden Snowdrop is such a pretty little flower. According to The Plant Expert, the flowers look like three drops of milk hanging from a stem. This accounts for the Latin name Galanthus which means "milk-white flowers". I found this one blooming on April 4 in the natural area on the west side of our house.

Crocuses are very popular and with good reason. They come back year after year, slowly muliply and come in beautiful colors like purple, yellow, white, mauve and blue. These have been in my garden since 2008.  They started blooming about a week after the Snowdrops. Last fall I planted white crocuses that haven't bloomed yet, but I'm looking forward to the show. 

No, I didn't climb the tree to get the photo of this nest. I used my zoom...being the zoomer that I am. We were driving along the Fox River and spotted this nest up high in a very tall tree on the river bank. It's common for bald eagles and ospreys to nest along the shores of Lake Michigan and the Fox River. I can't say for sure that this nest belongs to either one of those birds. It's just my guess. Darn birds...they could at least put out a sign identifying who lives there.

The Coo-Coo Kid had a birthday last weekend. His sweet mother made this Dirt Cake for his friend party on Saturday. She served it up with a plastic shovel and the kids loved it.

The next day the family gathered to celebrate our much loved brown-eyed boy and there was another cake. It was his ninth birthday. He asked recently if anyone had left a comment on his blog. I told him that he needed to publish a new post in order to get new comments. He has something in mind. Stay tuned.





April 1, 2011

This Is No Joke

Today is April Fools' Day, but this is no joke. We still have ALL this snow in our yard. No, that's not a movie star in the photo. It's me standing out there wondering what happened to spring. Covered with snow and waiting to make an appearance are daffodils, muscari armeniacums, hyacinths, glory of the snow, anemones, allium, camassia quamash and crocus.

This picture of my mother was taken on March 17. It was a mild day with a light rain that was washing away the last of the snow. We were leaving the nursing home after visiting my dad when she spotted this plastic Frosty buried in a dirty snowbank. She's had a rough nine months, but still manages to smile. One week after this photo was taken, we had another 17.8 inches of snow.

Let the mating season begin! For wild turkeys, that is. I found this male courting a hen. The males are polygamous and will form a territory with as many as five hens. The eggs are incubated for about 28 days and hopefully for the little poults the snow will be gone by then. 

Lots of leaves.
No flower stalks.
Poor me.
What did I do wrong?