The other day I sowed my first veg seeds of the year outdoors: snow peas, sugar snap peas, spinach, and radishes.  Daffodils are really starting to bloom en masse.

Also, my son and I got to catch up by phone, always a welcome, reassuring occasion.  Except for the sad (for me, not him) fact that he probably found a buyer for his house “as is”, and a rental house in St. Louis, and it’s all coming to a finale some time next month.  So that’s that.  I’ll have to put my pandemic practice to good use and continue to miss him after it’s behind us.  I wish him all the best.  We’ll still be here, holding down the TN fort for whenever it’s safe to come out again.

IF the pandemic is ever behind us.  At the rate these stupid repub governors are going, lifting all COVID mandates (if they ever had them to begin with), we’ll be right back where we started, with hundreds of thousands more deaths, just as things were starting to improve.  It’s like they live in some alternate world where somehow magically everything goes back to normal, while the rest of us are up against even greater risk of infection and death.  Insanity.

But life goes on, as it must.  I’ll continue restoring a more natural habitat, even as surrounding properties tear down trees and plant ugly houses.  All the more incentive to keep trying.  Soon we’ll be this wildlife refuge island in the middle of a nature desert.  At least that’s the plan.  I do what I can.

I’m having some (server?) tech difficulties uploading photos to my site, so you’ll have to just imagine flowers for now, until I can correct it.

Yesterday was unseasonably warm (70s), so I got busy.  I wasn’t the only one; the first chorus of peepers and tree frogs were out in force nearby, always my favorite time.  Hoping to attract frogs and others to a water feature some day, I started to dig out a hole (not pictured) for the larger pond liner, out in the “prairie”.  Simultaneously, I used the soil to reconstruct the boardwalk, redirecting it between trees.  It was hard work, in my winter flab condition, so after a few hours I left some for another day.  No sense having a heart attack in the middle of my project.

Another exciting sign of spring was the first blooming of daffodils and hyacinth.  I brought the first cut flowers inside.  It’s just the beginning of the flower extravaganza to follow.  I have no idea how so many hundreds of bulbs mysteriously migrate to all over the property.  I spotted a fat young groundhog checking out the garden, making plans!  I suspect it’s the little one that visited our front porch last year, only bigger.  I wasn’t able to get a photo, unfortunately.  Overhead, a couple of hawks were soaring and screaming, while down below, herds of squirrels were getting manically frisky.  Not me, though; I collapsed in a heap of exhaustion, being not as “springy” as I used to be!