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I had to grab the camera on the way out the door to work, since both of these guys were just hanging out on the fence right outside the kitchen window. Any help? What are they?

Bird #1: We’ve been seeing these ones for years – bigger than a robin, not as big as a stellar/blue jay. (For some reason, I’d been calling them mockingbirds in my head but I looked those up and they’re not even remotely similar. So now I’m at a loss.)

And Bird #2: we’ve been seeing these a lot for the last few weeks – nice color coordination with the neighbor’s deck and grill. About 2/3 the size of a robin.

Otherwise, we have a zillion little chickadee/sparrow/wren type things flitting around too, now that the feeder is up. The squirrels spend a lot of time beneath it combing through the seed shells, but I haven’t seen them manage to disrupt the feeder itself. (Victory? Or too soon to declare?)

Everyone at work mocked me for saying so, but I swear Saturday was sunny – I ended up doing over four hours of yard work. I sawed up the Christmas three and about half of the felled holly tree before I ran out of bin space, and then did a lot of weeding. I pruned the Japanese maple. I even finally planted the bulbs I bought on late-sale in early December (sprouting through the bag, of course. How else would one plant tulips?).

Given that all of our other tulips are already up, it’s probably too late for this spring (as usual), but maybe they’ll be a fun surprise next year – I planted all sixteen in a smallish rectangle outside our bedroom. Between the early bloomers and late bloomers, I think they’ll be an interesting addition to our existing crocus and tulip mix out there. Meanwhile, the kiddo seems like even more of a risk factor for our bulbs than the squirrels – here he is antagonizing/exploring some of the sprouting tulips while Kevin weeds in the background.

The bulbs are popping everywhere – tulips by the front walk, side yard, rock wall and in all of the containers. Daffodils by the kitchen. Crocuses in the back, side, and by the kitchen (though I haven’t seen the front ones yet). And even my little Easter planter from last year, relegated to a spot in the back and then ignored, is going full-force.

We have so much work to do in the yard – catch-up on a year and a half of haphazard yard work since the wasp incident in my third trimester, not to mention the normal seasonal stuff. There is just tons of weeding and pruning to do right now. We made a small dent –about a sixth of the rock wall, starting from the far left. Not terrible. I was playing with the panorama tool in Windows Live – here’s an 140-degree view of the rock wall in the back.

Taking out the holly tree really opened up that back corner – now we just need to do a ton of weeding. I’m thinking that if we got ahead of the weeding early (and did a very thorough job) and then mulched, it could be a great thing over the course of the summer?

And here’s one last happy shot of Kevin right before he took the kiddo inside (and let me spend another hour until it got too dark working without an increasingly cold toddler. Thanks, Kevin!!)

H. did a great job ferrying potting soil around from container to container, and gathering up a stick at a time and bringing it to the bin. Everyone has their tasks to complete. 🙂