Fun with Wildlife 2

Last night, the girls were playing on their play structure in the backyard while I was making dinner, when all of a sudden Caroline came dashing through the door breathless with excitement. "Mummy, Mummy, there's a skunk in the back yard."

Sure enough, there he was sauntering through the yard in broad daylight. The girls shadowed the little guy from a safe distance and I snapped this pic as he rounded the corner of our neighbour's house. I was very thankful the dog come back into the house a few minutes earlier, or we would have had a very smelly disaster on our hands.

Spring is busting out all over

It's about time I updated the picture on my blog header, isn't it? Up until even last week it was so cold the icy branches in the picture were not out of place. My other excuse is I was waiting for something 'springy' to photograph. Well the wait is over, these little crocuses popped up in the front garden, so here they are to adorn the blog header for the next month or so.

I'm feeling very nostalgic about Spring this week not because of the crocuses, but because I'm off work for a week and am indulging in a bout of Spring cleaning. I remember my mother and grandmother cleaning our house from top to bottom, opening all the windows and doors to 'air the house out', washing windows, waxing floors. I can still smell the floor wax, a heavenly smell that you just don't encounter anymore. I won't be doing any of those things, my list consists of cleaning out the girls' playroom, sorting out closets, and hauling away mountains of stuff to the Sally Ann. The amount of junk that we accumulate is criminal. One day into it and I'm already feeling like Wall-e. I'm clinging to the hope that clearing out the physical junk will somehow exercise the spiritual funk that I always fall into over the winter.
So here's hoping, and if that fails, I'm off to buy a tin of floor wax.

Backyard Wildlife

After two episodes of grackles in the fireplace (grackle number two had to be freed from the living room fireplace Friday), and battling the crows who eat everything in the bird feeder as soon as I put it out, it was nice to see this brightly coloured fellow in the back garden today. Spring must be here if there are lots of nice juicy bugs to eat.