A Winter walk

After sleeping for 13 hours straight, I woke this morning feeling better than I have all week. Still nowhere close to 100% but much better. To make it even better, the sun was shining and it was right about freezing. So the children and I took the dog for a walk. Then V and I took a walk together, just the two of us, talking about plans for the coming year. I remembered to take the camera along and snapped a few photos.

The stream is running. The grass is beginning to show through.

The little pool.

The tunnel.

Actually, it's the old culvert under the highway. Rumor has it that it was constructed so the cattle could use it as a tunnel to pasture on the other side of the highway when this was a dairy farm. I'm not so sure about that- but the deer use it- we can tell by the tracks in the snow.

Grrr, rabbits!

We have had snow cover for so long (since around Christmas!) that the rabbits are short on food. They have been hard at work on the apple. We were going to do major pruning on it this year anyway, they are just helping us decide which to remove. It sure looks like someone cut it off at the ground and it came up from the roots. Fortunately, the root stock was tasty. We noticed rabbit damage on all the shrubs in the yard as well. At least the blueberries and currants are well protected with wire cages. This just tells me that we will have to be very vigilant with our new trees that we will be planting this spring.

We are off tomorrow to my parent's farm. It is Dad's birthday tomorrow. My sister Julie is here from Colorado and J15 will be playing her violin at my parent's church tomorrow morning as a gift for my father.

I'm going to be starting a few more herbs soon, I think. I especially want to get my parsley started since it takes a while to germinate. We made a trip to the farm store this afternoon to pick up a new tie out line for Ticket (his old one got a serious kink in it and the cable is starting to rust and fray- I think someone drove over it when we had the sledding party). They had seeds there (of course) and I picked up some heirloom Four O'Clock seeds and some for purple coneflowers (Echinacea). I also picked up some seed for white patty pan squash. We had some from the farmer's market last year and they were so good. The kids nicknamed them UFO squash. I haven't grown much summer squash other than zucchini or yellow crookneck for a long time so these should be fun. I think that, other than a few herb plants, I'm done with seed procurement. Of course, I say that but whenever I see those colorful packets, they draw me toward them like a magnet..... It's like an addiction---JUST---ONE---MORE.....