Signs of spring

At this juncture of the foothills and plains, the winter that hardly was is quickly being pushed out by the spring that is anxious to be. While not exactly green and lush (a month with next to no moisture will do that), the spring crowd is moving in. We have new deer...


new growth in the burn area north of my neighborhood...


new ducks in the pond (American Wigeons, who've started a sporadic, aquatic turf war with the Mallards)...


the return of my favorite spring flower, Viola odorata, or super-good-smelling violet, which makes an excellent addition to the blah water in my water bottle...


and tons of other signs that warm is on the way. On a walk through the burn area, I saw two mountain bluebirds (no photo, those guys are fast), and the juniper bush near the office was stripped bare of its fruit by a gang of noisy robins and some waxwings last week. A lacewing just landed on my window and the garlic from the fall is starting to shoot up where I can see it.

This is often our snowiest month and I guess I should feel a little guilty this week considering that my friends and family out east are currently buried under a foot of new snow with temps in the zeros. Maybe we'll get ours and we could seriously use the water out here, but, in the meantime, did I mention it's about 70 and I'm wearing shorts and sandals?