Sunshine in the rain

It's been a rainy grey day here today...but when I came back from the city, I was greeted by the sunshine yellow of our patch of daffodils just by the gate, smiling at me!  A little bit of sunshine in the rain.

How happy that lovely yellow color is.:-D

Weekly bird in the hand

Here's this week's things that I am grateful for - my bird in the hand:

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/nosha/

• My friend Chloe. She's here staying with us this weekend, along with her parents and we are having such a great time! Let's get together more often :-D
• A good week of sales. It's nice to get home and have sales coming in from Dawanda, Etsy and my own site, all within the first week.  
• Getting back into singing. 
• The glorious weather here in northern CA.
• Catching up with friends I haven't seen in 7 weeks.
• Daffodils.  Our daffodils just started to bloom this week.  What a lovely bright yellow they are.
• Hiking with friends in the redwoods and seeing all the wild flowers especially the trillium.
• Seeing a covey of quail - yes Quentin and his buddies - in the garden most days.
• Seeing a great flock of killdeer in the garden one day ( killdeer get their name from their call, not that they kill deer!).
• The bluebirds are back in the vineyard.

Are you seeing birds and flowers that get you into the mood for spring?

More Hoodies!

I woke up this morning and looked out at the pond and it was just so still.  A pair of Hooded Mergansers were floating there - but seemed perfectly still too.

I managed to get a photo of the male, without going near him - and I just loved it with the clear reflection.

 

And yesterday, I  took some photos of some other "hoodies" of ours - the daffodils!  We have lots growing as you just drive up to the house!  It's such a lovely welcome this time of year to see this big splash of yellow.

I wonder what other "hoodies" I can find as I wander around the garden....

Hmmm.. maybe I can use "hoodies" as a source of inspiration for jewelry...any ideas?

Sunday's spotlight - Flowers, flowers everywhere

By guest blogger Pete.

Here in the U.K., last weekend was a bank holiday. In the southern part of the county of Lincolnshire - an area known as "South Holland" for reasons that will soon become clear - the landscape is hill-less and the soil fertile. It's one of the main areas for vegetable production in the country but it's also an area well know for the production of daffodil and tulip bulbs. It's a wonderful sight to see whole fields of daffodils and tulips in full bloom. Alas, it's a long time since I've seen fields of tulips in bloom but we did see some fields of daffodils in bloom three weeks or so ago.


For a number of years now the May Bank Holiday weekend has been the date for the well know Spalding Flower Parade, when various floats are drawn through the streets and end up at the large tulip gardens in town. The main ingredient for all the floats has been the petals from tulips. Just lately, however, the production of tulips has fallen off and it was thought that this year's parade would have to be cancelled. Fortunately an alternative source of tulip flower heads was found in the neighbouring county of Norfolk and more cash came from the County Council and other donors so the parade, although somewhat different from previous years, took place. I'm told the weather was typical for bank holidays but this didn't deter the crowds from turning up to witness the event.

For me, a more interesting feature that coincides with the May Bank Holiday and the Spalding parade is the churches flower festivals. A large number of village and town churches in the South Holland region hold their annual flower festivals at the same time as the Parade.


Pam and I paid our annual visit this year, taking with us Bill and Jane, two friends, for whom this was a first visit. They'd never seen such floral displays before. Each church visited is, literally, a mass of colour - the colour of the flowers - and the scent is indescribable. These church displays are done by experts - local folk who have been doing them for years.


Most churches adopt a different theme from each other so every church visited has something different to marvel at. So many and varied are the displays that it took us the whole day to visit just four of the many churches offering festivals. The photos for this blog are the first ones I've worked on - only a few so far - and were taken in the church at Pinchbeck. Try finding that village on a map. We also visited the villages of Donington, Surfleet and Gosberton. It's impossible to say which one was the best - they were all so very, very good.

Keep on smelling the flowers!