Spring

Well, sort of. It snowed and the temperatures dropped from 60 to 32 during the day here during the past week, but none the less, spring has arrived. With it has come the chores of cleaning up after our beloved dog, uncovering roses to see what we find, cleaning rain gutters, raking the lawn and the like. The nice thing about winter is that when spring comes we actually enjoy these chores to a certain degree because it's nice outside, and I'm not wearing my snow pants any longer. We've also been taking some bike rides (Evan LOVES the bike trailer), and enjoying some walks in the sun light.

Did you know that the first Saturday of the month, Home Depot has a free project for you to do with your kids? We went for the first time this month. The project was a planter box. Evan had some interest in it.

.

But mostly, he just wanted to eat popcorn, visit with friends and check things out.

Something ate my roses this year. I'm usually worried I'll find just plain dead, or moldy, or very sickly roses that will need nursing back to health, but this surprised me. One of the rose bushes was GONE entirely. No evidence it ever was there remained. No roots, nada. This bush was loose in the ground as I uncovered it. It was my best grower/bloomer.

THis is what the root ball looked like when I lifted the bush, there was NO resistance, something ate it through. I don't know what, and I'm not sure how to combat them yet, but I'm going to learn.

Online readers, meet the star of Maggies worst nightmares. This Sharp Shinned Hawk tried to eat her last week. Lucky for her, she was on the right side of our dining room window. Not so lucky for him.

When I first went to check on him, he had blood in his beak and left eye, he was panting with is head on the ground. Things didn't look good. I came inside and Stephan asked how he looked and if he needed to take care of it. I said I didn't know, but didn't think it looked good and asked him to check. He came back inside saying the bird had perked up and "it's a hawk". Wow, ok, I wasn't sure what it was, but I wasn't thinking hawk. It's about this time that Evan suddenly took off running to his room and said "we have to get some supplies to rescue the birdie" He came back with his multi purpose jump rope, and said "I'm ready to rescue the birdie", and asked to go outside and help. A short time later, he started calling "Diego, Diego" Stephan took these pictures, called and emailed to the raptor center in Minneapolis, who initially thought this may have been a rare form of falcon, and sent someone out to pick him up. He had tried to fly a couple of times, but didn't make it past 3ft off the ground. The man who came told us his species, said he was about 6yrs old, thought he would do well in rehab, and took him on a ride to get patched up.

I sincerely hope this fella comes back and has friends who will eat whatever ate my roses, and hopefully leave my chihuahua alone.