Spring is here!

This week, the first peeper emerged calling for a mate from across the road. After a few days the chorus joined in announcing that Spring had arrived at last. Heavy rainstorms had washed away the two plus feet of snow that weighed us down only weeks ago, and snowdrops and the earliest of our croci bloomed to our delight. Today, my camera didn't cooperate when I tried to take a photo of them and our tiny Tete a Tete jonquils. So, here instead is a picture of Daffodil Hill taken around this time last year blooming about a week earlier than it will this year. We naturalized daffodils in our backyard many years ago so each bulb now produces more than a dozen flowers, enough for bouquets to share. When they're blooming I'm reminded of a favorite poem from childhood which begins:
I wondered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o'er vale and hill,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
a host of golden daffodils
beside the lake beneath the trees
fluttering and dancing in the breeze
( I hope my memory serves me well here).

There's so much to do out there it's hard to decide which chore gets top priority. Yesterday, I tackled the bramble and weed trees that are crowding around our two peach trees. I suppose the practical thing to do is to make a To Do list. Let's see, where do I begin.......

Blue skies

What a beautiful weekend! Higher temperatures are melting the 20+ inches of snow we received last week. Hardy shoots of snowdrops have finally popped up and the earliest variety of croci are beginning to bloom. Does every winter that passes seem longer than the last or has it been just this winter? This weekend it's been lovely to walk Sparky, our Beagle Lab mix ( called a Blab by his vet), without concern about slippery patches. Just a short week ago, it looked like this outside.

Though it's hard to stay indoors on such a sunny day, I intend to tidy up my studio. On second thought, maybe I'll just wait til the sun goes down. My studio has files jammed with book and licensing illustrations, as you can see in this photo taken when it was a bit less cluttered. Yes, this is how it looks at it's best. Not visible is the wall of books and the back wall of closets. I'm afraid that if I had twice the space it would still get cluttered. It's so tempting to add books. A recent purchase is Jerry Pinkney's The Lion & The Mouse. Not surprisingly, it's beautiful and the story is told in a new and interesting way. No surprise there, either.