Country Living

We helped Jim and Jess complete the move to their new house today. Things went exceptionally well – in fact, it was the smoothest move in which we’ve participated, and we’ve lived in five states – even though this weekend is the opening of the Cherry Festival. Tonight when we returned to our home, only the sound of crickets greeted us. The country sings the song of my soul. Ahhhh 🙂

Click any photo for a slideshow with larger versions

Horses horsing around

Soaring hawk

The sun looked giant tonight

Low level aurora and a plane

Last night’s cloudscape

Last night’s cloudscape

Sunburst over our neighbor’s barn

Through the White and Drifted Snow

Just in time for travel, a winter storm trudged across northern Michigan, dropping inches of mashed potatoes. I peeked out our bedroom window earlier to spy on the boys, and I am convinced they are as happy about the snow as we are, wet and lumpy as it is.

Waaahoo!

Weeee!

Let’s go!

Summer in Winter

Fabulous weather again today. In a burst of outdoor productivity, I raked all the locust pods from the fall and storm detritus into ten – yes, ten! – piles. I was going to leave them to deal with tomorrow, but I’m a goalpost-mover, so I moved them tonight. The way I see it, all the lawn trash makes for good hole-filler and possible future compost pile starter.

In other productivity news,Tony and I surveyed the damage in our back acreage (there’s a lot – we have some chainsaw work ahead of us), and we picked a couple of potential saplings for transplanting. So there you have it – the mundane occurrences of a Monday in an atypical March. It’s refreshing to be outside getting stuff done so early in the year.

The horses have also been enjoying the warmth – and fresh greens. I took these pictures today – look at my post from 3/16 to see how much things have changed in four days. It sure feels like summer, even though it’s still technically winter.

Post kayak trip last night on the south end of Torch Lake. After a hot day, the cool Torch Lake-infused air had me dreaming of a campfire 🙂

Hanging My Hopes on the Weather

Yup – it’s a terrible idea. I’m doing it anyway: I officially have Spring Fever.

Spying on the Neighbors

Perhaps if I’d titled this blog “Spying on the Nay-bors” you might have thought me a bit less weird. Perhaps not.  In the middle of cleaning up tonight’s dinner, I ran outside three – yes, three – separate times to photograph the sunset. Which felt a lot like spying, because my horse neighbors kept giving me questioning glances, but couldn’t quite tear themselves away from the delicious winter grasses they were munching.