Promise of Spring

 I had planned to post a Saturday Night Cinema recommendation today but instead I enacted my plan to make everybody in my family hate me.  The kids were set to work cleaning the house and Moose was sent up the neighbor's extension ladder do do some jobs for me.

This was one of the jobs, to extricate the mosses and one fern growing in the window.   The other was to wash those same windows.  When he was done  my mission to be hated was completed and I was left outside holding the squeegee and the window cleaner; it seemed silly NOT to wash the rest of the outside windows. By the time I was done with the windows the sun was shining in a late afternoon manner and I decided to investigate a flower moose found growing in the grass. 

It was one of these.  I don't know what they are do you?  Whatever they are they are pretty, and yellow, and they are flowers and it is January!  They are all over the grounds.

I would say that they are the first flowers but I have had violets (just one at a time) all winter long. 

 

This pot sits on the porch just where the exhaust from the furnace and the exhaust from the dryer meet.  I assume that this creates a micro climate just right for growing violets.

And this is why I did not rip out all of those heather bushes this summer, 

they might be boring in the summer but look at them now!

These are pretty boring pictures but they might be the happiest.  

The one deficiency at Starling (besides the lack of a good place for a vegetable patch) was that there were no lilacs.  I transplanted some not knowing if such an endeavor would succeed.  All summer I had these sickly wilted lilac sticks along the fence.  It didn't look good.

These photos lead me to believe that they made it!

 

 This was my favorite discovery, bright green moss everywhere.  Moose got out the moss control but I made him keep it on the grass only.

You just can't make me mad about moss.

Don't hate me because I have flowers.  I still have 4-5 months of clouds and rain ahead of me.