working outdoors

Lilacs in bloom, spring is here. They smell really nice! The bush is doing much better this year now that it's fully freed from some bittersweet that was attacking it. It was a lot of work to get rid of the bittersweet near this bush and along the dog fence. many, many, many weeks of effort. Well worth it though. Living in the woods does present challenger.

 There's an area at the edge of the yard and the start of the woods that has a weird, rooty tree growing. I've done a lot of clearing in that area and maybe want to cut the tree down (for more sun) but maybe not. I've tried plating some marigolds in amongst the roots too see if that adds interest to the area.

Rooty tree right by the first stone wall

I've planted some marigolds amongst the roots.

Pictures of spring

From late April through May it finally becomes spring like here in New Hampshire. Below some signs of spring, flower bulbs starting to bloom, frogs and tadpoles, looking for frogs, toads, snakes and the like at night, star gazing and Freeze wanting to pull Hayley back into the lake before the water is really warm enough, to play catch the stick!

When the kids outgrew the turtle sandbox several years ago we decided to let it go wild and see what happens. It has over time become home to several frogs, a couple water newts and this year the frogs laid a huge clump of eggs in there so now there are MANY tadpoles. It's been fun to watch the turtle sandbox evolve.

April fools, rains and melts

On April 1st I decided to play a joke with Colin and Tristan. I gave them each a math book which appears like the ones they work in but was a much higher level. I though they'd catch on right away and I would get some funny surprised faces. The silliest thing was that they both tried to work the problems even though I'd made sure to choose pages with math problems they'd never encountered before such as pre-algebra topics.

Tristan eventually decided the print was way too small and gave up.


Colin "did the math" just did it all wrong. LOL I stopped him after a few problems and let the joke out of the bag so to speak!


I asked the boys didn't they think anything seemed wrong or really different and they both just thought they were being introduced to new topics that day and were trying to work them out. Guess I must give credit for trying!!! It was funny, especially since they didn't react the way I thought they would.

Getting plenty of walks with the dogs now that better weather is here. It sure is raining a lot but at least it melts the snow and ice!

Poppy enjoying a spring day.


The ice on the lake is starting to melt around the edges.

What a mess the lake is though! Nobody ever took in the communal toys, maybe they were buried in snow too soon and nobody noticed. Suddenly the other day we saw them uncovered again. So much tree damage left from the December ice storm too. We've been cleaning up a little each time we take a walk to the lake.