ham on wry

I hate puns, but this came to me like a flash, like a vision, the answer to a question I hadn’t asked:

If I were a sandwich, what kind of sandwich would I be?

This concludes the random portion of this post. Let’s look at what nature had to say for herself today.

Witchhazel. We’ve seen this before. I’m going to keep a watch on this and post pictures as it opens up. I like how it looks like it’s been dipped in gold dust – it’s one of the few colorful items on display these days.

It was warm today – just an overshirt needed, no jacket. BRING IT! Warm means melt…and melt means mud. Here’s a rivulet coming down from the hill above our house – it goes through a culvert under the shared driveway. It’s got a waterfall, but I don’t think you can see it – I didn’t feel like wading into the snow to get closer.

Next up: the brook, upstream. Water’s pretty high. That’s muddy snow on either side.

And now for the downstream. The lower left corner is where the brook jumped the banks recently. Needless to say, the heart rock collection I’d assembled on a tree stump is long gone. That’s OK. There are always heart rocks to be found.

Just for kicks, here’s the downstream, and the upstream view, August 8, 2010:

Back to the present moment…here’s the field, where the stream had its passionate fling with freedom recently…

Ah, mud season… this is why the recently-revealed Honda will have to wait a few more weeks before I can take it out for a spin. It’s a wee lass, not up to the challenge.

And here we have the eastern contributor to our pond – a little freshet that runs adjacent to the road and under a fat culvert by the mailboxes. That’s a Beaver Prevention Device in the entrance to the culvert. Damn, it’s wet out there.

The redwing blackbirds are here – the males. They’ve actually been here for a while. I first heard them the first day we got back from South Carolina, and I have no way of knowing how long they’d been around. There is a whole flock of them down at the south end of the pond, clustered around some … spruce trees, I think. Maybe pine. I should know that! I was unable to get any close-ups, or even medium-ups, of these guys. They didn’t like me standing by the side of the road with my camera, and lifted up, circled around, and landed in the top of the spruce tree here. You can see a handful of them in the picture below. The whole time, chucking, whirring, clicking, revving up their little personal buzz saw voices – a song to warm my impatient, cranky heart. I just want spring to BE HERE already – it takes forever around here to get going.

Speaking of impatient critters,

 

This is what feeding time around here looks like. Usually I feed the beasts, but Kevin did the honors this evening and I enjoyed trying to capture the mayhem. That’s Maggie, resting her paws on the drawer handles. Naughty child.