Spring has sprung
Some grass has riz
We wonder where the boidies is.
Well, actually, the boidies is here all right. I’m hearing them in the mornings, and while I can’t tell a nightingale from a yellow-bellied sapsucker( The only bird that I can reliably identify is a killdeer.), there certainly are more of them out there before the sun comes up. And another thing, when the sun does come up, there are woodpeckers out there beating their heads against trees as the sunshine warms up the bugs under the tree bark. McDonalds for the early birds.
Do you suppose this is really it? Spring, I mean.
I went out and filled the bird feeders for what I hope is the last time this year. The early arrivals have been sucking that stuff down like nobody’s business. The squirrels have ripped open several suet feeders that were meant for itinerant woodpeckers, yanked them open and threw them on the ground. I put out a hummingbird feeder on the front porch, out of anxiety that the little guys would be getting here and finding NOTHING to eat. There are even some small snow patches still around; I don’t think that hummers are adapted for sorbet this early in the year. AND…take a look at the south-facing bank of the creek by the Boardwalk. The flowers are coming up!!! A volunteer crew spent one chilly, damp afternoon back in the Fall poking holes and dropping in bulbs…seeds…whatever they were; I don’t even remember what kinds they were, anyway, they’re making an appearance now that the sun is hitting them for an extended period every day. But these are not the only flowers coming up. I found out that some time ago the Garden Club of Garrettsville, the Silver Creek Garden Club, planted a stretch of the bank directly in back of the businesses on Main Street; there’s a sort of terraced effect there, made with railroad ties or some such lumber. Don’t know if the Silver Creekers were responsible for the landscaping but I sort of think that a few husbands/fathers/brothers/sons/neighbors/friends might have been drafted into service for that part; they’d probably remember the aches and pains involved. I also discovered that one? doyen? of the garden club, a certain Faye Carlisle, to be exact, was working back there on that beautification project, when she fell and broke her collarbone. I’m glad that I did not know that when I went scrambling up and down the bank sticking those new bulbs in. We even put some in over by the fountain-that-needs-work near the support pillars of the Boardwalk; they’re coming up like champs. As I recall, there were several different color schemes on the flower packages, so the over-all effect should be pretty cool. There were some plants put in over on the other side of the creek too but they have not been getting the same amount of sun and will probably be a bit later to show their faces.
Don’t forget to cross over the creek some evening or early some morning to see the effect of the lighting project. The village (Go, Maintenance department!), the Rotary Club of Garrettsville-Hiram and assorted volunteers got this all going; come and see.
How much you want to bet we could have one more snowstorm to deal with? Just hope it’s not the catastrophe that they’re having out in the country’s midsection.
I’ve been out clearing away the winter debris, trying to identify what’s coming up in the yard. I’ve planted some new stuff but I’ll be dipped if I remember where or what. If the moles, squirrels and such have not feasted on the handy salad bar that I put out for them, it could be a colorful assortment; I did save the bags that they came in so I might be able to identify at least some of them when they show their faces. As of now, my philosophy is, when discovering some new green shoot, is to let it come up and do its darnedest until it can be positively revealed to be a pernicious weed, then it’s curtains for the chlorophyllian counterfeits.
The cats are pretty impervious to the delights of Spring; they don’t go out. At least two of them have been hanging around the doors, thinking about making a break for it. Don’t think that they’d last long; they think that they’re starving if their breakfast schedule is off by five minutes. Grimmy is spending most of her time on top of the kitchen cupboards because the two macho cats try to beat her up when she comes down. If either of them looks at her, she goes into “growl mode”–sounds like a small motor up there. She’d love it if those two dudes got out into the wide world; it would expand her world to ground level.
Don’t put away the snow shovel yet.
