Nice tulip photo

I don't know why I've remiss on blogging-bloggy things have been happening. Here's a photo of some nice tulips in the butterfly garden.

This can't be right

While I'm happy to see some green in my yard, I'm a little concerned that the tulips are already popping up! Hopefully they know something that we don't, that winter is almost over? I know I've seen the tulips in February, but I can't remember finding them in January before.

Happy Earth Day!

Following closely behind my love of red tulips is my love of yellow tulips. Here are the most recent blooms in my yard.


We also have some pink hyacinths blooming-I planted 5 bulbs last year, it appears only 4 made the cut.


Jana pointed out that my yarn crafts aren't coming up much in my blog. (Their time will come, probably around mid-November all the way into December when I start cranking out the Christmas decorations and gifts. My goal this year is not to be finishing my Christmas crafts in the car on the way to Omaha for Christmas. That was cutting it a little close.) So here's a nod to Jana-I was trying to finish Corrie's pillow tonight when my orange helpers got in the way.


That's ok, I still need to buy buttons for the pillow, so it wasn't going to get done tonight anyway.

My first tulips

It's amazing what a couple of 70 degree days will do! These red tulips went from mostly green to full out red all on Saturday.


I think red tulips are my favorite. I love these yellow centers. When she was little, my sister used to talk about how someday she wanted a yard full of tulips so she wouldn't have any grass to mow. I don't think she understood that a tulip's bloom time is very short, or sometimes non-existent, like what happened last year when we had literally frigid weather in late April/early May. Corrie claimed I personally killed all of the tulips last year, but I beg to differ.

I planted some spinach and lettuce seeds yesterday. I hope they don't wash away like my seeds did last spring.

Thrift Store Goodies

While shopping for an April Fool's chicken at my local thrift store, I spied this game from the 70s that I wasn't familiar with: Constructo-straws. The package looked too complete and a very good deal at $3.99, so I bought it.

It didn't take me long to find someone who did know and love this game; my friend, Amy L. said she and her brother played it a lot when they were kids. (although is it really a game? I guess not. Just a toy.)

I thought maybe I had the very first daffodil blooming in my yard in Lincoln, but I saw a bunch on campus already in bloom, so mine isn't that special. It still looks really nice, though.


The tulips are a large mass of green now, and the crocus still look very nice. I didn't realize they closed up at night, so I made sure to get a good photo while there was plenty of daylight.



Corrie got a hankering to build a real compost bin today so he could have a place to put the stuff that had decomposed nicely in the bottom of his old truck bed, but he got as far as sifting the twigs out and then informed me that the compost bin would be part of his 2015 yard plan. (I don't think he really means that-I think/hope he means he wants to do some other re-arranging in the yard before he settles on a permanent compost location.)

The Blanket is done, now the baby can come

Amy and Jeff's baby blanket (not for Jeff but for the baby, sorry Jeff! I can put you on my to do list if you'd like a full-size blanket) arrived safely in Colorado last week, so now I can talk about it without ruining the surprise.

It was a really fun pattern to do, but it turned out bigger than I expected. I think I had to make two extra trips to the yarn stores to buy additional skeins. I really wish they made yarn that repelled cat hair because I spent a good amount of time and a good amount of my lint brush removing the stuff, even though I was very careful while crocheting to keep the cats away and only expose as little yarn as possible between the bag it was in and the piece itself. (and yes, Scabbers, the cat of cat sweater fame, is in the upper part of this photo, but he was not allowed on the blanket.)

My new project is a knitted pillow to match Corrie's striped blanket. I'm only using one of the colors from the blanket (thank you, Jana, for the yarn freebies) and the pattern incorporates a striped motif. It's hard to tell it's a pillow from this photo, but it will make sense later on. I have a long ways to go-the main part of the pillow pattern is supposed to be at least 32" (you fold it in half to make the pillow shape) and I think I've only knitted about 10" of that right now.


In other news, the tulip report this week is not good, as anyone who lives here could guess. I'm sure they'll be fine-they got an extra layer of insulation, thanks to Thursday night/Friday morning's snow. I realize now looking at this photo that I didn't get the same tulips we were monitoring before, but it was too cold out to go back and find the right ones. I didn't even bother looking for the crocus.

Is it ok to just rake up the snow with the leaves?

It's a balmy 45 degrees already today, which if you factor in the windchill last Wednesday, that's a temperature difference of 65 degrees! It feels so good, I'm ready to tear into the yard and do the chores that should've been done last October, or maybe November at the latest. The trouble in Nebraska is the trees just don't lose their leaves until December, so unless we get some nice Christmas weather, the leaves just don't get raked until springtime. I don't think this is all bad, since I hope they serve as insulation to the plants below, but they can't stay there forever. I might try to hold off until the rest of the snow melts, I guess.

I've been periodically surveying the yard (both for plants and graffiti, we had some issues last month) and found signs of the first tulips emerging. They come up every year about this time, and I know that they'll be ok even if there's some chilly March weather.


The rest of the yard looks kind of sad, but it won't be long before there will be plenty of plants to care for and weeds to pull.

The butterfly garden today:



The butterfly garden, just last fall:

I'm hoping sometime this weekend I track down the crocus I've planted! Surely they're ready to come up.