Spring Has Finally Arrived!!!!

In the summer of 1982, Rick and I, along with two 4 year olds and a dog named Cocoa, traveled from Northern Illinois to West Tennessee to visit his family. The route we took traveled through the western edge of Kentucky and I remember looking around at the dense foliage and thinking that it was the greenest place I’d ever seen. And I do mean GREEN!

Now, 30 plus years later, I am living in Northern Minnesota and can honestly say this is the whitest place I have ever seen. And I do mean WHITE!

The ground was constantly covered with a thick white blanket, every tree wore a white coat and every rook had a layer of white frosting with beautiful long ice cycles hanging from the edges.  The grey/white skies promised to refill the places where we’d pushed the blanket back in order to navigate safely from place to place, even if it was just to the mailbox and back. The picture above was taken with my cell phone just a few weeks ago...in April. 

One month after the actually first day of Spring, Winter has finally loosened her grip on us and is slowly receding, revealing brown wet patches of earth and grass struggling to turn green again. The trees have been trying to leaf out for weeks and on many you can see the yellow and red of new growth waiting to burst loose with life.

There are several squirrels that spend their days scampering from tree to tree, one seems to have an infinity for my favorite maple in the yard, the same one pictured in an earlier post. I can see the tree from my upstairs office window and enjoy the show the squirrels put on for me in the morning. It’s just one of those things that make me smile. If you look closely you will see one of my delightful friends on the top board stretched across the 2 cedar trees. 

The little birds have been back for a couple weeks now but this morning I was delighted to see another telltale sign of spring in my yard – Robins -- bunches of them. It was a joy to watch them dance across the yard in pursuit of a meal.

Out the big bay window at the back of the 

house is the most obvious sign of spring, 

a river of water from the melt off heading for 

lower ground. At the end of the flow is the 

inlet to the stream that flows through our

 property and under the road as it heads 

for the St. Louis River a couple miles away.