Hi! Remember me? I was pre-empted the first three Wednesdays this month, but I'm back!.Saturday marked the official first day of spring, and it just can't come too soon for me. North Alabama has had the strangest winter in history. We've broken low temperature records and had lots of little snows that didn't accumulate but were enough to mess up the roads and snarl traffic. We even had a tornado in January.
But maybe we've turned a corner. Maybe better weather days are ahead -- at least temperature-wise. Spring brings tornado season to this region so while we may have flowers and sunshine, we can also be assured the weather alert radios will be going off and we'll be heading to our safe places to ride out the storm.
This was taken two days ago. We had big, fat snowflakes falling for a while, but no accumulation.
And this was taken yesterday around noon. The day lilies are poking their heads up and I can't wait to have all these flowers blooming beside my patio.
One of my neighbors, eighty-something Miss Vera, decided to just go ahead and make spring happen with silk flowers.
The red maples that line many of the streets in the complex are sprouting leaves. Soon we'll have those little helicopter things all over the place.
The grass here in the complex is Bermuda, so it won't get green for a while. But the weeds are green!
I started some plants for my patio in indoor pots. Look carefully at the bottom of the photo and you can see the little seedlings. This is multi-colored coleus. I saw the first signs of life here on Monday.
This is sweet basil and I have three plants now. They poked their heads through the dirt on Saturday.
There's pasture behind the apartments and yesterday one of the horses was enjoying the sun.
And a fat robin sat in a tree just outside the gate. That's a sure sign of spring, isn't it?
This, folks, is blue sky! Isn't it beautiful?
You have to look carefully in the middle of the picture, but this appears to be the beginnings of a bird's nest in the tree where I've hung a bird feeder. The greedy little things have already eaten a bag of bird seed, but I love watching them. So far I've had a cardinal, Carolina chickadees, various varieties of finches and mourning doves who graze of the seed the other birds drop on the ground.
And this is where I intend to be camped out once it's warm enough to don a bathing suit. There's nothing like a poolside chair for reading a romance novel.
Has spring come to your neck of the woods yet? If so, what signs of it have you seen? And are you as eager as I am to shed wool coats and sweaters and pull out sandals and short-sleeve clothes? I'm planning my Easter attire now -- one outfit if it's sunny and warm and another if Mother Nature decides to freeze us on Easter. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the former.
One commenter will receive a book from my stash -- something they can enjoy by the pool or at the beach or just curled up on the sofa.
