Saturday, June 6, 2015

Spring has sprung

Well, despite my love of hot chocolate, wood stoves, handmade quilts, movie nights, snowshoeing (not that I did any this year), and, of course, Christmas, it felt like this winter would never end.

But it has!

I've been missing for quite some time because April was a wildly busy month due to some rather unexpected community involvement, and then during May, at various points each of the children was sick, as was I, and my love was away in Halifax for two weeks so I got a taste of the single parenting that so many island ladies are undertaking when their spouses are out west.

However, I'm back at this blogging thing, and I thought that to announce that I am still among the living, I'd share a couple of quick snaps as evidence that our beautiful island has emerged from the 540+ cm of snow (yes, that's almost 18 feet).





A robin spent one entire day working on building a nest in our gazebo.  The next morning, there was no sign of her.  I suspect she decided that the location wasn't entirely suitable for bringing up a family.  I was equally torn between disappointment that I wouldn't have such an intimate view of her young and relief that our children wouldn't disrupt her nesting behaviour to the point of losing the clutch.

One thing that I love about having a wooded backyard is that some of my favourite little wildflower friends have popped up to say hello!  Here is starflower (Lysimachia borealis, formerly Trientalis borealis) which darling little girl loves to wear in her hair.

A rather blurry photo of Clintonia borealis, of which we have a large patch in the woods.  I've been hearing ovenbirds so have been hoping that they might be attracted to the cover on the forest floor here!
The flowers for false lily-of-the-valley (Maianthemum canadense) haven't just come out yet but I love their delicate and dainty nature.

So this is the far less native and more intrusive lily of the valley, which I nonetheless appreciate.  Especially covered in raindrops!

I don't care where forget-me-nots pop up, they make me incredibly happy.  The kids love them, I love them, and they make adorable mini-bouquets all through the house!


I would like to pretend that I know what this is, but I'm not entirely certain.  It's obviously a fruit tree in the rose family, and I think it might be apple but I didn't see one bit of evidence of apples when we moved in late last September, and I didn't notice anything when we looked at the property in late August.  Cherry maybe? Plum? I don't know.  One of the trees is really damaged after double whammy of the children climbing on it while buried under a heavy snow load, so I intend to plant apple trees between the two existing whatever-they-are and then eventually remove them.  For now, though, they're beautiful.  Sadly, they are NOT covered in bees as I hoped they would be.  I have only noticed one bee at any one time in our entire yard.  Is it possible that I have one resident bumblebee and that is it?!

Who doesn't love the happy smiling faces of pansies!  My vegetable-hating children think that it's cool that you can eat them, so I plan to put them in salads this spring and summer in the hopes of enticing them to eat something photosynthetic.
Yay for spring!  I don't even mind the black flies and mosquitoes too much at the moment, because there is life and warmth and growth out there.  Hurray!