I’ve got work to do this afternoon, but I’m completely distracted by the show outside. It’s been so dry here that I had to turn on some water in the backyard. That’s drawn the birds like nutso – juncos, sparrows and house finches mostly, but I saw a couple lesser goldfinches in the neighbor’s elm tree (which is starting to leaf out).
The picture is from the window in my home office. There’s a little house finch splashing ’round in the bird bath like he hasn’t seen rain in two months.
The lilacs are starting to leaf out too, and we saw a hawk swoop low from southeast to northwest as we were sitting in the back munching lunch. Official Inkstain Daughter Nora dropped by unannounced on a long walk. There are few things better in life than having your kiddo drop in and spending some leisurely unplanned time in the backyard listening to birds, moving a sprinkler around and chatting with your offspring.
As you can tell, though, I’m back at the computer. The work will commence. But the window’s open and I can still hear the birds.
We’ve still got a snow pile in the shade on the north side of the house, but I’ve been wondering when to water things. (If there’s water in lines outside, it will still freeze at night here.)
My parents are returning next week from their snowbird travels. Hopefully Murphy’s Law will kick in and we’ll get a good March storm. I haven’t been looking at the snowtel records this winter – I should.
Checked the snotel – the San Juans (on both sides of the divide) are still slightly above average for snow-water equivalent. We’ve had some rain and a little snow down here, but the snow line has mostly been above Durango this month.
We wish we had snow like Durango over here on the Front Range.
I had to drag the hose around last week as even the mounds were dry. We don’t have leaves yet, but the crocus are up and the daffies are peeking, at this rate they’ll bloom in three weeks-ish, and I had a lettuce in the coldframe bolt (!). A couple weeks ago folks thought I was crazy for starting the tomatoes and peppers, but no more.
At any rate, all that to set up my request for John to send some birds our way…
Best,
D