The warm weather has meant a little more bird watching here for me and the cats.

I keep the feeders full the best I can all winter, but the finches come to the yard mainly for the seeds from the coneflower heads. Last years stock is almost all depleted, so they’ve turned their focus to the kettle feeder I have in the willows. I keep it full of straight black-oil sunflower seeds, which is another favourite of the finches.

It’s now not a surprise to come out and see a finch or two on it. Like Mr. and Mrs. Goldfinch here. I’m not sure what was going on with Mr. Finch’s head…

He had some sort of wild and crazy feather do going on.

And while the finches are feasting… the crocuses keep crocusing…

Last weekend’s snow didn’t seem to hurt them a bit and there are new blooms popping up every day. The mix I planted is supposed to last two months with early-late flowering bulbs, so it will be fun to see if it actually does.

More bunches of Winter Aconite are popping up too. I’m very glad about this because I was really worried most of them had died off, even though they are supposed to be pretty robust.

And the Squill (also known as Glory of the Snow) is also starting to bloom. I have this in four colors – pink, white, purple, and blue. And it’s all throughout the front gardens so there will be much more coming.

Friends back in my old city already have daffodils blooming. I’m jealous, but it looks like mine won’t be too far off.

In the mean time, the bees are making do with what’s blooming already. Mid week, the pussywillow was absolutely alive with honey bees (temps reached almost 20C again)

You can see the pussy willow is covered in pollen. It’s one of the best early pollen sources for pollinators, so I always recommend planting some if you can. It even gets some unexpected visitors.

The ladybugs are always welcome in this garden! And it’s nice to see they made it through the winter!

Walmart did it again. We went into pick Dave up another case of the fancy Coca Cola Spiced…. and they had the plants RIGHT by the front door. And then I saw it…

The most heavy metal, rock and roll cactus I’ve ever seen in my life. The picture does not show how lethal it really looks. It’s has CRAZY long spikes and it’s absolutely COVERED. I just had to bring it home with me.

Just look at the size of some of these spikes!!!! The whole cactus is no taller than the length of my hand (which is fairly small as far as adult hands go!) It’s just wild.

I’ve named him Bruce Prickinson after the lead singer of the band Iron Maiden, and Dave is going to help me design an Iron Maiden themed pot for him.

On the softer side of my indoor plants…

One of my orchids has rebloomed. This is one of my newer orchids (I bought her late last year after a trip to Mom’s), and her first bloom spike died off just before Christmas. It was a surprise to see her blooming so soon, but a welcome one!

I’m thinking my orchids will go out in the woodland garden for the summer. Our summers are fairly humid and I think they will like that – and the maple will give them plenty of cover from the sun so they don’t get burnt. It will be an interesting experiment.

I’m itching to get outside in the gardens to do anything… anything at all!

One of the best things about bringing Lemmy into the house, has been seeing the relationship between him and Rupert.

Relic is not a big fan of Lemmy. And while Burton gets along with him just fine, when they play, there’s no way Burton will let Lemmy come out on top. Burton is just too dominant.

But Rupert… Rupert will play just the way Lemmy likes. He’s just as rough and loves to be chased. And when they are all played out..

Rupert is always up for a snuggle.

All the quilts from the weekend at Mom’s are off to their owners. Hopefully they will land soon and I can show you the one I’ve been keeping secret.

One I can show you is just a wee one.

You may remember that when I made the quilt for Samantha’s anniversary. I had a lot of corners cut off from snowballing. And I used those corners to make little HSTs and put them into a quilt for her beagle, Calibre.

I normally quilt the pet quilts on my own machine, but I knew I’d be headed up to Mom’s at some point so I set this one aside to quilt it there. It literally too minutes on the long arm

Binding didn’t take terribly long either. It’s only24″ x 28″. Perfect size for a wee beagle…

Or a wee Lemmy!

The chest cold I picked up still had me under the weather this weekend. I’d hoped to be able to catch up on all my SAHRR rounds, but in the end, I only had they energy to bang out one block to catch up with the Blockheads.

Still – one block is better than nothing. And there’s always this coming weekend to get caught up on everything else.

The chest cold I brought home from Mom’s was still kicking my butt on the weekend. The muzzy head made stitching on 18 ct black aida even more difficult than normal.

The helpful paws of a certain ginger cat weren’t much assistance either. So all I managed to accomplish was about 3/4 of the outside line of the second wing.

I’ve still got a brutal cough, but most of the head fuzziness seams to be gone, so hopefully next weekend will be more productive.

Mother Nature is a cruel, cruel mistress. After all that sunshine and flowers… we woke up to this…

I wasn’t amused and neither were the cats.

It probably won’t last long. Temps are supposed to be back up to nice by mid-week. But it was certainly a stark reminder to not worry about doing to much in the garden any time soon.

Good thing I’ve got knitting to do.

The Harriet Bolero is coming a long nicely. I’m almost through the increasing. The pattern only goes up to size six, so I’m enlarging it on the fly a little so it won’t be too tight on Miss Wren. I’m not terribly worried – most of her growth is in height. She’s a skinny little string bean. Still, it would be nice if she could wear it for more than a few months.

The other day, Dave need to go to Home Depot to get a piece of pipe. And like Wal-mart, Home Depot has become a danger zone for me. They’ve started carrying a pretty good selection of house plants. Unlike Walmart, HD’s plants are usually on the pricey side so it’s easier to resist. Except when they are on clearance!!!!

Those giant orchids were only $10. I was having trouble deciding between the colours… and Dave said “Why not get both?!?”

I certainly wasn’t going to argue with that. I’m pretty sure I already have both these colours, though in smaller versions. But I don’t mind, I just love orchids!

I’m almost positive I already have this particular colour of violet…(like the orchids, I have several)

But it was only $2 and the very last one. I just had to bring it home. Besides, it’s hard to resist a violet in bloom.

And you may have noticed that pile of pots on the table with the plants in the first picture. I need to do some repotting of quite a few of my smaller succulents, so I picked up some small terra cotta pots at the dollar store.

These will of course be painted up with some fun designs as soon as I can find some time.

As will these.

I found them next door to the Dollar Store at Michaels. They are technically kid’s projects, but why should they have all the fun? They come with little paint pots, but they aren’t great quality, and probably aren’t enough anyway so I’m going to use my acrylics.

So…. how do I go about getting more hours in the day…

Were still on Mother Nature’s wild roller coaster ride, but when I got back from Mom’s, there were some new crocuses open in the catio yard.

These are my Monarch Snow Crocuses… and they are one of those plants that looked better in the catalogue. There’s not really wrong with them, but I just didn’t realize how small they are. Snow Crocuses are small to begin with (which I didn’t realize when I bought them), but these one are really tiny! Those blooms are barely the size of a dime.

They also looked much more orange in the catalogue. They are darker than the ones out front, but they aren’t exactly orange orange.. y’know…

But it doesn’t matter to the bees.

And there’s a little bit of yellow I’m very happy to see.

These are my Winter Aconite. Like the crocuses, they are small, and among the first flowers to bloom. But I thought I’d lost them. They are right at the front of the front garden, but I was seeing no sign of them. Thankfully, when I got back from Mom’s I saw this pair shining brightly in the sun. Hopefully more will be appearing soon.

But it’s not just yellow in our spring garden…

We’ve got purple and white coming up too!!!

And more and more snow drops are appearing…

I plan to add them to all the gardens, and in a couple years, I should have small little “area rugs” of them all throughout the yard.

And there’s signs that there’s lots more to come

It’s going to be spring bulb heaven here over the next couple of months.

Well my friends…. despite all our valiant efforts… his Lordship will not be crowned America’s Favourite Pet.

He made it to the last round for his group, but unfortunately, did not get enough votes to go onto the finals.

But we thank you for all your votes, and he knows that he’s a favourite in all your hearts. That’s good enough for him!