check out the ducks

I won't kid you about my picture taking prowess. It's blind luck. I just take a ton of pictures and some come out better than others.

yet, more signs of spring

The ligularia is sprouting up. The well established plants and the seeds I planted last fall are all popping up. Pat and I will never have to buy another ligularia plant again. Pretty cool. The lenten rose has doubled in size from last year. There are three seperate flower stems this year. We're leaving the winter leaf mulch on the hosta beds for another couple of weeks. It's supposed to snow this week and the hosta aren't even close to popping up.

A freshly raked back yard.

So, what is it? if you know, please let us know. It sort of looks like ligularia, but isn't because ligulariadoesn't come up in clumps. It also sorta looks like that dreaded weed, creeping charlie, but isn't because creeping charlie is green and kind of a vine.

More pictures of the boys

I can't get enough pictures of the boys. Every day is a new adventure. Yesterday the black lab from behind us came over to visit. Well, since the boys didn't invite him over, they attacked him. Being a lab, this dog just stood there in disbelief. His owner just kept saying "I"m sorry, I'm sorry". I reminded my backyard neighbor to exercise positive control of the dog and told her as long as she didn't mind her dog getting bit up, I didn't mind the dog wandering over.

Bob is pretty friendly when he's by himself. Fred is the paranoid in the family. I think it's from his being on his own in central Illinois when he was a pup. When Fred feels threatened, and he always feels threatened, Bob comes to his aid with his big dog teeth. Fred just gums you when he bites. His teeth are pretty worn down.

Stuff growing on Pat's berm

There's a whole bunch of plants coming up on Pat's berm. The small stubby green things are sedum. The spear-like green things are some kind of day lily. I couldn't hazard a guess about what kind of day lily, there's only like a thousand different varieties.The green and purple things with small leaves are some kind of perennial geranium. The spaghetti like green plants and the purple long leaf things are anybody's guess. Pat can recognize all the plants once they grow a little bigger. Maybe plant tags are the answer. I always told myself that plant tags was going one step too far, but I did enter an online contest for customized plant tags. The dry grass and sedum just look cool. That's why I added them. We're going to cut them both down this weekend.

First flowers

Can Spring be far behind? Our lenten rose is in bloom. The pale rose color stands out against the brown leaves. We keep saying that we should plant a few more of these guys, but never seem to get around to it. This year we really want to hold the line on adding new plants. Pat and I intend to exercise self control this year, so no new plants. Except maybe for the ones that call out to us at the Botanical Gardens show in May.

A boy and his dog

Also the name of a pretty funny movie with Jason Robarts and a very young Don Johnson.
The pictures show the boys in their "dads home, dads home" mode.

Signs of Spring

The last two days have been wonderful outside. The sun's been out and the temp's in the 60's. The yard's still too wet and cold to rake but it's a perfect time to take pictures. The primrose has suffered freezer burn because the plant side of nature doesn't talk to the weather side of nature. That's why we're leaving the dead leaves as cover.

Somebody was hungry.

Illegal in red states

Our friends Bill and Sarah Gann came over for cards. As a surprise we had Lou Malnati's deep dish Chicago style pizza delivered. One of the hardest things to get used to in Cleveland is the lack of deep dish pizza. Lou Malnati's was just the fix. I almost had forgotten how good the flakey buttery crust tasted.
For dessert, Pat bought a "giant hoho" from a great little bakery near the house. Everything the Western Reserve Bakery makes is wonderful. To my suprise, the best thing of the evening were the giant cream puffs Bill and Sarah brought from Presti's bakery. Presti's bakery is in the Little Italy neighborhood in Cleveland. It's next door to Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt. These cream puffs are so good that I'm surprised that organized religion has not banned them. They are probably illegal south of the Ohio River because of the sheer pleasure they are to eat.

Fun and games on a Sunday afternoon

The Strongsville Women's League buys a table at the Strongsville Education Foundation trivia pursuit game. Pat brings me along for the history and geography portion of the game. Well, I answered 9 out of 10 in that category and the 3 history questions in potpourri. I always thought that potpourri was that smelly stuff people hung in their bathrooms. The history questions were pretty easy, I mean, doesn't everyone know what the flag of Libya looks like?

I've been on the same team for 3 years know. Our ex-neighbor Don sat in during the sports segment. To tell you how sports infused Ohio is, each segment of this event is called a quarter. It gets worse. The jamoke who's in charge threatens every team with a technical if anyone questions the answers. Well we were perfect with the sports questions. We got none of them right. I've never trusted guys who know way too much sports trivia. Something occurred during their formative years that make me glad that our daughters have never been attracted to them. But, the team does need one of these guys to be competitive. We lost the lead during the sports segment, never to regain it.

The guys who run the event remind me of the jamokes at summer camp who talked and talked about a project, when Wayne had us start and finish the project while the other guys were still talking. I'll blog about educational apparatchiks later. The students who worked the video equipment only got to film the event. They told me that they don't get to do any editing. Like I said, a later day.