Flowers, Birds & Lace

We walked over to the woods this morning to listen for turkeys gobbling, but didn't hear anything. The only new bird songs I heard in that area were brown thrasher, white-throated sparrow, and eastern phoebe. It sure is nice to hear the spring bird songs again. As we were walking back, a turkey flew across the clearing ahead of us. It was flying too fast to see whether it was a hen or a tom.

I got quite a few chores done at home today, the usual cleaning and laundry, but also changed around the winter and spring clothes and got a bunch more stuff together for the rummage sale coming up in May. When and how did I acquire this much stuff?

We had some rain this afternoon and it's cooled down quite a bit now. I ran outside quick before the rain to get these pictures of some of my blooming daffodils. I sprayed the daffodils with Liquid Fence (www.liquidfence.com) last week to prevent the deer and bunnies from eating the flowers. Last spring I only ended up with one blossom because all the other buds got eaten. Since I've sprayed them, no bud snacking has occurred. This stuff smells so disgusting when you're mixing it and spraying it, but it has really worked well in my yard -- especially against the bunnies.


Here's a picture of a blooming Nanking cherry bush. Several of these bushes are just starting to flower, but all of them are covered with buds, so the next few days should be very pretty. I can't remember for sure when I planted these (and couldn't find it in my journal), but I think this is their 3rd year. I'm hoping this year they will bear fruit because I've read that birds really like them.

Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal visited the crabapple tree this afternoon and he kept coming over to the feeder to pick out a seed and feed it to her. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of him feeding her and I was fearful of getting too close to the window and scaring them both off, so here's a picture of just him. That beautiful red color sure brightens up the yard. I wonder if they'll nest nearby this summer?

I'm making good progress on my Irish Lace Diamond shawl. I worked on it Friday and Saturday during the car ride to and from the birding festival, and also got quite a few rows done while listening to speakers. I really like the way this is turning out and I love the color. I'm going to try and get this one done so I can enter it in the Olmsted County Fair in July.

The robins have abandoned the nesting platform under the deck, in fact I think everything that had been placed there blew away in the winds yesterday. However, I have discovered that she's building a nest in the small spruce tree right outside the back garage door. When I was home on Friday morning I kept seeing her fly up to the birdbath on the deck with her beak completely covered in mud. She would swish her beak around in the birdbath a couple times and then fly away toward the garage. I got up to watch where she was going and saw her fly into the aforementioned tree. When I got home yesterday, I checked the tree and there probably about 6 feet up, I could see the bottom of her nest.