Older than dirt ...

Yesterday was my birthday ... whoopee! The highlights of the day were talking to the grand kids! Ava sang me a sweet rendition of Happy Birthday, and Sam demonstrated his counting skills by counting to 58 in multiples! I spent a lot of time on the phone ... literally hours! I talked to or got messages from 9 of the 10 kids, so that's about as good as it gets! Brian & Joann brought me a beautiful batch of fresh asparagus from their garden, and my neighbors Jon and Floyd made me a special birthday dinner and a chocolate cake!

All in all, about as good as it gets! Oh, & I treated myself to a rather splendid trip to Lou's, the local greenhouse. ( I was there for 2 1/2 hours - I'll let you imagine what I spent)

In the digi world, I received the most beautiful card from my friend Mary Hampson, who lives in the UK.

She has been helping me the past few weeks on some technical help with the 3 blogs I was designing, especially the one for the local cancer support group. She is a real genius when it comes to computer stuff, and also a wonderful designer. Check out the 3 blogs and see the amazing blinkies that she created for me!

If you have a blog and want a copy of one of them let me know! I'll help you get it set up!

Believe it or not, the fishing opener has come and gone! Most years it has been a major holiday at my house, but this year it turned into a major work weekend. I can never say enough about my amazing family! The saying "many hands make the load light" hardly begins to cover it! This year I had Shae, (my son), Kurt, (step son & very close friend), Kari, (daughter) & Jim and Jan (ex husband and his wife). And yes, we are all family! Here's a few shots of what was accomplished ...

Dock in -

Trailer loads of branches that I had cut were piled on trailers and burned -

And a couple of shots of the lovely spring flowers that are popping up!

Nearly bedtime here, but I wanted to share a couple of my favorite layouts from the last couple of weeks ...

One about the flood -

One about my love of/ addiction to caffeine

And a few of the Grand kids!

That's it for tonight, but I will sleep better knowing that this poor neglected blog finally has a new entry!

It's official ... Spring has sprung!!

Wow ... I am really bad at this whole blog thing! I guess I need to add it to a list somewhere ... comb hair - check, brush teeth - check, write in blog - ya right.
In any case, spring has officially arrived! Yesterday I took 11 wood ticks off Maizee, and 4 or 5 off me - a sure sign that it's spring in Minnesota. The flood waters have finally gone down to an almost normal level, and I guess I need to post some photos of what it looked like around here. I am still counting my blessings that I emerged almost damage free. Kurt came for the Easter weekend and helped me pull the plastic and wet insulation from the basement, and clean everything up with bleach water. Inside all is well - outside, not so much. There is so much debris all over the yard that it will take forever to clean it up! Oh wait - I don't have forever. There's going to be a wedding here in August! So why can't I stop playing on my computer and get to work? (I blame it on Hummie)
It's also pruning season. As always, that's a slow go. We have had a few really nice days, and I can accomplish a lot when it's nice out. But while most of Minnesota has experienced above normal temps and sunshine it's been mostly gloomy and cold here. And wet ... let me repeat that... wet. Even wearing my tallest Wellies I need to change pants 2 or 3 times a day because everything is so soggy and muddy, and I won't even mention what Maizee looks like! My living room looks like a tribe of grade school kids have been building tents. Every possible surface is covered in old blankets and towels, hoping to save what is left of my aging furniture. The folks from HGTV would have a stroke! Ok, back to the pruning ... I was working out a formula. If I could do one tree every 2 hours, x 300 trees, = 600 hours. Oh ... that's not going to work - by then the trees will have bloomed, and have apples on them. ah well ... another year of a lick and a promice.

The ice officially went out on Saturday, about a week earlier than normal. The open water has brought me several new neighbors! I have several pairs of Canadian honkers, and Mallards that must be nesting on the shoreline, because they spend their days gliding back and forth, driving Maizee crazy. I need to do some research and find out how to teach her that the birds are our friends! Before long there will parades of fuzzy babies learning to swim out there, and I would be heart broken if she hurt any of them.

Ok ... it has reached 40, and the sun is shining. I must drag myself out to the orchard! On the bright side, I downloaded South of Broad by Pat Conroy onto my ipod last night, and I am excited to listen to it! (all 21 hours) It's been on my to read list for a long time, but I just keep moving it to the bottom of the pile.