Beauty and the Beast

I have always loved this crabapple tree when it blooms in the front garden of our neighbors. I use the term 'garden' loosely because the couple who live there have a rather unique collection of vehicles a water tank and a very big camping trailer parked there as well. A few of the cars move around but the trailer and the earth mover never move. We understand that the latter won't start, and wonder if somebody is living in the former. It wasn't really possiblle to get a picture of the tree without the John Deere, but John said it was 'kind of interesting' as it is. 

We took Spike up to his meadow this morning and I took a few minutes to look for newts in the pond. It is full of water but also of thickly waving algae in the bottom. If the newts are in there, they have plenty of places to hide and can't be seen. More bullrush reflections in extras. There should be lots of frogs in there but unlike the ones who live in our pond/water feature/whatever are keeping shtum.

The meadow is still a bit soggy but sun cups are appearing in the grass, there was a red winged blackbird sitting on a bullrush uttering its rather plaintive, metallic cry, the trees are leafing out, a fallen branch on the trail has a whole garden of lichen and moss growing on it, and the poison oak is a beautiful spring green garland draped around the base of a tree. A couple more of those images in extras. 

I'm putting the finishing touches on the top of my little quilt project and am going to try to quilt it myself as it would take too long for my quilter to do it. 

It's been a really beautiful warm spring day today and it is supposed to be even warmer tomorrow and the next day. After that, it will get cold again and maybe rain again once March has become April. I got carried away purchasing salad greens at the Farmers' Market yesterday, so I'm going to make a salad to take to Jim and Dana's for Sunday supper tonight.