We are discovering to our delight that whoever planted the flower beds around our house really knew what they were doing! We're getting wave after wave of new blooms as we move through the spring: crocuses, then daffodils, and now tulips and bleeding heart (surrounded by an amazing carpet of forget me nots!), with more discoveries on the way - underneath apple blossoms and others we don't yet recognize. The beds have gone rather wild, but still are presenting beautiful riots of color. What an amazing place!
We've had some unfortunate close encounters with birds (apart from the neighbor flicker pair that still like to hunt their meals in our gutters occasionally). First the kids found a barn swallow stunned to death in the horse barn, then a northern parula hit our living room window and didn't recover...
We finally have our own dog in the house (sort of). We boarded Sailor, a yellow lab 5 month old puppy, for 10 days as part of his training regimen. We are now official puppy finishers with the CNIB program - raising puppies training to be guide dogs for the visually impaired! And shortly after Sailor, we welcomed Freda, his sister, who will stay with us for up to 6 months until she goes to guide dog "college." Here she is meeting our fish family - which has grown significantly as we successfully are raising 6 more fry!
Mom has been slowly working towards putting in the garden. Braving clouds of blackflies and the expectation of ticks, she has managed to get a small patch of ground turned over and ready along with about 1/2 the fencing wood required salvaged and chicken wire to surround it. Now for enough time without rain and with energy to put it all together! Needs to be soon as the plants we started indoors are more than ready for their outdoor planting.
Another project she's been scraping away at is preparing a chicken coop! Imma has 12 extra chicks this spring, so we are going to take some. Although we had big plans to fix up the garden shed as a coop and build a run, that has proven to be too big a project to tackle in time to welcome the chicks. So a combined birthday present became a readymade mobile coop that will be housing chicks as soon as next weekend... so we just have to find the time to put it together this week! Perhaps a coop afternoon project :)
Imma rescued a somewhat frazzled mom by bringing in a birthday party Sunday night. So mom had a party like she hasn't had in years - lots of family people, some worship songs, and LOTS of cheesecake (3 people brought some :) ) Mom felt very loved...
And then, on birthday day, Jasmin had her first book talk for
Uprooted Homekin at the monthly homeschool youth meeting. She also led a workshop for the kids. It was fun to see her confidently speaking of her book and sharing lots of hard-won knowledge with the group.
And some fun with other wildlife: fishing ginormous tadpoles and pouncing on frogs in the field, watching the gentle light show of fireflies at night... and avoiding the stubborn porcupine who refuses to give up his habitat to us. Since we currently have 3 dogs with us (Imma's 2 and our CNIB puppy Freda) that is a high priority.
