A cherry blossom spring

Casey has been talking about going to see the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin for weeks. The weather has not been that co-operative but today, the very last day of the cherry blossom festival, at least had no rain in the forecast. I thought it was likely too late to see them this year and I was correct. Above you can see a view looking towards the Jefferson Memorial and below we were looking across the tidal basin towards the Washington Monument and the White House.
As you can see, the blossoms were definitely past their peak.

If you look really closely around the Washington Monument you may be able to see some of the many kites that were in the air as part of the Kite Festival today.

Now this shot (above) shows some lovely cherry trees at peak of bloom in my neighborhood. Ordinarily our trees peak at the same time as the ones at the tidal basin but we were several days (at least a week or more) behind this year.

It almost looks as though my garden has been dusted with confetti as the blossoms start to fall.

This poor pot of ivy is looking very bedraggled after the winter. I have cut it right back to encourage it to new growth and for added insurance I added this new piece of Haitian art I bought a few weeks ago.

My daffodils are very lovely this year.

And finally, this pot of pansies that has sat out all winter long by my front door are putting on a good show.

Tomorrow we are forecast to have an unusually hot day with temperatures in the high 80's so I'm thinking the dogwood trees will burst into bloom then. And I will be out with my camera to record them.

The First Day of Spring

As well as being the spring equinox, today was also a sunny day with a light breeze which was a potent invitation to get outside and continue with the spring clean of the garden beds. Splashes of yellow are starting to appear in my garden.

The rhubarb popped through just a few days ago so while I was outside today I took a few minutes to add some fertilizer to improve the crop this year.

Here is my second rhubarb plant (above) and I show it now with the birdbath for scale. Let's see how well it grows this year.

The plum tree is just bursting out into bloom. And one of the days tasks was taking down the hessian windbreak that I had up for protection of the fall planted boxwoods.

I continued cleaning up the top bed. At peak bloom this has a lot of echinacea with a few heliopsis (if the rabbits leave them alone) and Russian sage. To the left are a couple of bridal veil spirea which are just beginning to come into leaf. And the straw colored plant is New England asters which I cut down after taking the photo.

Some creature is tunneling in the rear of this garden area. You can perhaps see the upheaval in the grass. It drives the dog crazy when he goes out in the morning as there is a lot of new smell to investigate.

Earlier in the week I started the job of cutting back the liriope beside the front walk. Here you can see how bedraggled it was after the winter but that is all gone now. Behind that I had already cut back the chrysanthemums.

This was officially the first daffodil out in my garden this season on March 18.

And not to be outdone - another first splash of yellow is the faithful dandelion!

I'm looking forward to another good year in my garden.

What's a dog to do?

The ever faithful Rolo dog deserves a special mention from time to time.

Yesterday as I returned from yet another quilt related outing who was it greeted me first at the back door? Why Rolo of course as it was very necessary to give me the entire sniff over to see what enticing odors had stuck to me while I was out and about. He watched while I dragged my bags inside and as I parked my sewing machine ready to take upstairs he flopped down beside it with a resigned look on his face. Perhaps he was going to guard this bag to make sure it stayed home tomorrow!


Around the middle of the day today Geoff noticed that someone had left open the closet door where Rolo's dog food is stored and that it had been like that for several hours. But the ever faithful Rolo had not taken advantage of that open door and decided to snack away. Not our Rolo.

Despite the fact that his food and water bowls are very close to where his food is stored he had not helped himself.

Here's a shot of him when he was excited to think that he might be going somewhere:



What a great dog he is. He will be ten years old on April 25.

So much for thoughts of Spring

After the heady days of temperatures in the 70's last week the temperature is 25 degrees F this morning and here is the back yard view:



But I am thankful that this is all there is as the forecast potential was for 2" to 5"of snow. And that this is only snow and not an earthquake such as there has just been in New Zealand where I have family.

It's not Indian Summer

but surely there is a term for when the weather gets unseasonably warm in mid February and everyone gets a serious case of Spring Fever.

This past week that is what we have had. The temperatures were creeping up higher each day and by Friday got to a high of 77 degrees F (which is 30 degrees higher than the average for that date).

Along with the warmer temperatures there has been a lot of wind so I was outside picking up sticks; that is broken branches and the like. My stick pile is getting quite big by now:


While occupied with that task I needed to be careful where I was walking as the first few daffodil shoots could be seen bravely poking through:


The forsythia branches are showing buds:


And I took the time to clean out the bluebird house:


It would be grand if this year a bluebird did find the box and use it! Each year some bird has a try at taking up tenancy in this real estate but in all the years it has not been a bluebird and it has not been a nesting spot that has been a success all the way through to there being baby birds. Maybe this will be the season!

Tree tops in winter

Although winter is not the prettiest season in the garden if you look around, and up, with a keen eye there are some interesting sights to see.


Earlier this week after a stretch of several dreary days we had a blue sky day. Looking out my window I was struck by the contrast of the winter hue of this cedar tree with the background sky color.


Unhappily, right next to the cedar tree there is this view of a wretched plastic bag trapped in the maple tree. I hope it is not too many more days before the wind will carry this away.


In our small town there is currently a campaign going on to name the bird that best represents our town. Artists are being asked to create and exhibit artworks of their choice of bird and the photographers are all snapping away trying to capture a prizewinning photograph. There is a red bellied woodpecker who is fond of this tree in my garden so when I saw it this morning I made a dash for the camera to see if I could take a photo to enter in the exhibit. As you can see, I was not able to zoom in close enough to get a clear photo of the bird but I did like the winter images of bark and raindrops all the same.

Maybe I'll remember in May to tell you which bird won the election.

Does a recipe live up to its name?

Last week, when the weather forecasters were correct and we were having a snow event we decided that it was a good night for "comfort food" for dinner.

The ground meat to make meatloaf was taken out of the freezer to thaw and meat loaf was made.


But we all wondered if perhaps that ground meat had been in the freezer too long as the meatloaf was drier than usual. Nevertheless, we did enjoy cleaning our plates.


It wasn't quite as dry as it looks as I poured on the gravy after taking the photo. We cleaned up the dishes and later on cut into the pie Geoff had made for dessert.

This was a new recipe, sent us by AK, and its name is Disaster Pie. H'mm.


The recipe is one that requires you to put aside all notions of how a pie is meant to be made. Despite well buttering the cooking dish first it was a struggle to get a neat serving out of the dish.


Later, when I was rereading the recipe I saw at least one suggestion that we had overlooked and that was not to use fruit that was too juicy. We used frozen peaches and frozen raspberries and the latter just turned immediately liquid when cooked. But that does not really explain why we had to chisel the slices out of the dish.

Perhaps the pie was simply living up to its name.