winter. spring. winter. again.

well, i thought it was finally spring. the daffodils started blooming:

and by daffodilS (plural), i mean all THREE of them. ha!

this one with white petals and a pale yellow center has a fragrance! it's sort of sweet like a stargazer lily, but not cloying.

i used to not care a thing about daffodils. until i learned that they will naturalize in your yard...spreading a bit more every year. in fact, if your climate is right, they will eventually form a carpet (aka a drift) that will bloom all spring and then you can finally mow it all down once it's died back.

and if you really get into it, there are a bazillion different varieties...many with a fragrance!

now that i've overwhelmed you with my 3 yellow daffodils, i'll show you my leetle blueberry fleurs:

wee little bells that, come early summer, will have plump little berries in their place.

in not so flourishing news, here's my 'rose garden':

pretty pathetic, huh? but my mister just gifted me two new rose for valentine's day! sweetness, a lavender variety, and black magic, a velvety dark red rose---the same rose that i carried in my wedding bouquet!

oh, all this springy flower blooming business? well, snow has been forecasted in central texas tomorrow. schmeh! what gives?!

for ♥QueenPlinker♥

some pics of the chicken house (in all it's tattered-plastic prepared for winter finery, errr....yeah):

we just recently built the little fence around their house. they had pretty much destroyed everything in the yard, plant-wise and also would build nests in strange, hard-to-reach places where they would end up broody and thusly missing for a month...so now they have a happy little hay-filled playland and they seem surprisingly content within its confines.

i have to say my favorite part of the chicken run is the old rusty gate:

i bought that gate at an antique shop in houston, like, a million years ago. it sat rusting, relegated to a stack of vintage metal gates, headboards, and fencing that lives in our backyard. until lee came home one night and dug holes for fence posts around the coup in the dark. i suggested he use the old rusty gate and he happily obliged. we're both quite proud of it.

the picture below makes me cackle with laughter.

i didn't realize until after i uploaded it to my computer that, nevermind helga in the foreground, but the girls behind her (ursula, stella, and ruby) all appear to be craning their necks to look around her to see what i was up to. (it's more effective if you click on the picture and view it big.)

additionally, by request, my finch and dove 'cathedral' that mr. katinka built from cypress plant stakes purchased for 10 cents a bundle at the garden center. it has a tin roof that cost about 20 times as much as the rest of the entire structure. and no, it's not finished being painted. it may never be. c'est la vie.

in mr. P news, he had his cast removed saturday morning and proceeded to chew his stitches out saturday night while we were sleeping. and not only did he chew his stitches out, he thought he'd take a little skin with them, too. sunday morning i pulled him out from under the sheets to find a gaping hole on his little foot where once he had been sutured up so neatly by dr. sebby. at any rate, we made a visit to the vet (again) where they decided it would be best to re-wrap his leetle foot with a granulation agent (this is a new term to me, but now forever ingrained in my mental animal-husbandry filing cabinet) to help the skin regrow (layman's terms). he's been on antibiotics since the initial surgery for the tumor removal so i'm not concerned with an infection and he seems to be minding the new wrap just fine. we'll go back friday morning to remove the wrap, inspect, and probably put another on. poor little P, the doctor says he'll most likely have an ugly scar now, but we aren't worried...we just want him to be happy and healthy. we love all our animals no matter what! currently mr. P is curled up in bed with mr. katinka, awaiting this so-called cold front that's supposed to blast through our neck of the woods sometime tonight. cozy!

with that, i leave you with........my happy girls: