Spring Has Sprung!

The creeping myrtle that I pulled long ago from the bank behind my childhood home and transplanted here at our house is one of the first plants to flower right after the crocus appear.  It really is quite invasive and can be a challenge to keep it from taking over the landscape, but I planted it in the back corner which is fairly rocky and unusable without major effort and landscaping.  It reminds me of my growing up years, my mother aggressively pulling it out in the spring to keep it where she wanted it.  Sometimes in the summer I would take a blanket and my lunch and have a little picnic in the grass at the base of the bank between us and the neighbors on the hill behind us.  That bank also provided us with a place to sled in the winter and just run down in the summer.  The neighbor sometimes yelled at us to get off that hill, not sure if the top of it was her property or ours but it didn't stop us from playing there.  My brother Dan broke his arm running down that hill and tripping over a tree root. Good times--haha!  Poor Dan was the one who broke bones--arm, wrist, thumb--all while just being a kid and running around, riding his bike, and playing.  I guess out of four kids one of us had to be accident prone!

You know it's spring time when the forsythia blooms!  These also remind me of my childhood because we had a huge "fence" of forsythia between us and the side neighbor.  They are also invasive!  My mother, it seems, loved her invasive plants--ha!  It did make a really good privacy fence though.  We only have a few growing across the back of our yard, but of course they are spreading so.....

We had a few really warm, summer like days this week and one evening after dinner I spent a little time on the back deck and watched the moon rise through the trees. This picture doesn't do it justice, but it's funny how the moon rises before the sun is set.  It was pretty bright because it was nearly full on this day.  Soon the leaves will be out and I won't get to see it through the trees until the fall.

I don't remember how long ago I planted these hyacinths, but this one came up in spite of being covered by leaves and a pile of twigs my husband put there last fall.  I moved the sticks off of it when I saw it coming up through the leaves.  Soon we'll have to get busy with rakes to uncover everything.

My older daughter and I went to a paint and sip fundraiser for the pet adoption she went through for her new cat.  I was smiling, but the person who took the picture must have snapped this before that--probably I was saying something in the second before.  It's a fun memory now!  I followed the colors on the example picture and the instructor's direction, Anna made hers colored like two of her cats. 

The background of this picture is from our little Lake George at Schooley's Mountain Park nearby.