View of the Swamp

These pictures were all taken the same week, four different years.  How neat if I could have taken them the same day and been a bit more consistent with the same view, but I didn't.  The week is March 20 - 27th, and the years from Top to Bottom are 2013, 2012, 2011, and 2010.  We bought this property in the fall of 1986.  How extraordinary if I could have been taking pictures from the same spot all these years!!  In those first years, hubby and I walked across on mostly solid ground.  When children arrived and were walking on their own, we would walk across and have a picnic on the rock, easily visible in the bottom left picture.  During their middle school years, the beavers had begun in earnest and the kids would walk across on logs scattered across the growing swamp like pick-up-sticks.  These past several years, you have to wait till it's frozen.  New neighbors who live closer to the edge have ventured out in snow mobiles this winter, well, last week actually!

Oh, Dear!!! DEER!

A nearby town made the national news for snowfall this week.  Silly, to most of us, as this is New England!  We've had snow in April before!  It was pretty and deep and a wet snow, making a beautiful backdrop for a flock of first of the season Redwing Blackbirds.  We also woke up to tracks all through our yard and the neighbors.  

They found the male holly at the corner of the house.  I can't blame them, it was a very poor year for acorns. Usually our yard is covered with acorns and we rake them and send them over the hill where the deer feast all winter.  I think in the 25 years we've lived here this is the first without acorns.....there were a few, but a very few!!!

 In the 14 years since we've had the house built here (has it been that long?), this is the first we've had deer eating right up against the house.

Spring

  Spring arrived over the weekend, with some little touches around the house thanks to my daughter.  I traded out the black tablecloth that is so perfect for fall and winter with its clusters of apples and vibrant splashes of red, orange and green for a blue damask with dragonflies and flower clusters.  My daughter took it from there.

My granddaughter and the babyMomma planted a bulb of 4 leafed clover a few weeks ago, and it opened just in time for St. Patrick's Day!

I walked by this grouping for an entire day before I realized it was there!  While I don't believe I have a drop of Irish, the babyMomma does, thanks to great grandparents on her dad's side.  My favorite picture of the grandbabies....we were supposed to repeat this picture in the matching outfits this February when the light was just right.  We'll get to it.  Grandbaby girl still fits her outfit!!  We have a new one for her "little" brother that hopefully still fits him.  He's amazed us this year and is now bigger than his "big" sister!

A bird's eye view of the cake dome.....a white bird (ceramic? resin?), a nest with blue eggs, and vintage field glasses that were a mother's day gift last year from the babyMomma.

Green

I found this poem in a collection of poetry for children.....thought it was quite appropriate as we're waking up to white this morning!!

Wearing of the Green

It ought to come in April,
or, better yet, in May
when everything is green as green--
I mean St. Patrick's Day.

With still a week of winter
this wearing of the green
seems rather out of season--
it's rushing things, I mean.

But maybe March is better
when all is done and said:
St. Patrick brings a promise, 
a four-leaf-clover promise,
a green-all-over promise
of springtime just ahead!

-Aileen Fisher