This weekend was absolutely gorgeous. It was sunny, fairly warm and breezy. Perfect spring weather and a major change to what we’ve had the last month.
The last month or so we’ve had pretty much nothing but rain. Rain, more rain and then it rained again. We had nearly 11 inches just in the month of March then it rained again the first week of April. They’ve had problems at Beaver Lake because of the rain, there’s been lots of street flooding, bridges have been washed away. On a more personal and admittedly petty point, I’ve had my own problems with the rain (besides the obvious of getting soaked everytime I get in and out of my car).
I’ve complained many times about the worms that come in under my back door when it rains and boy howdy, they’ve been a problem. My cat has learned that they are coming in whenever it rains she guards the back door to make sure none of them get in. When they do, she plays bats them around until the worms either give up or die. Here she is protecting my apartment from the evil earth worms
Missy is also overly fascinated with water, considering she’s a cat. Whenever it rains super hard she whines at my doors because she’s wanting to see what’s making all that noise. Here she is trying to figure out the rain. (Notice the towels on the floor, those are used to help mop up the water that seeps in under the door and rots the wood in the frame). It’s a video and I can’t figure out how to embed it in Xanga so I’ll just post the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENlf8jDz4TU
But anyways, enough about the icky rain. This weekend was beautiful and I even got the chance to start on my front flower display. I keep two planters below my two front windows. Every spring I look forward to planting something. Here is what the planters looked like a few years ago
A lot of leaves, dirt and just STUFF had accumulated around the planters over the fall and winter. John and I spent about an hour cleaning up the area and it looks really nice. I prefer to do the cleanup then planting in two stages on different days so I don’t start to feel like I’m doing a chore.
Now with the area all cleaned up, we’ll have to decide what to plant. I’m fairly limited because of the planters’ location. They don’t get much sun except for in the late afternoon they get direct sunlight at the hottest part of the day. I’ve had varying degrees of luck, based on several factors including weather, soil qualities and my neighbors forgetting to water my plants while I was on vacation for 10 days.
Now for the big decision. Most years I’ve planted impatiens with a different variety flower thrown in the mix. One year I did mini roses that had thorns in hopes that my (now former) neighbhor’s kids would stop pulling my flowers. That tactic didn’t work, by the way. I’ve also put in pansies, petunias, azaelas, and different ivys. I most enjoyed, however, what I put in last year I think.I had grown tired of impatiens. It was a mix of petunias and begonias and they did so well that I finally stopped watering them so they would die!
So what are your favorite signs of spring?