What’s happening around the pond

The pond reflects

Wherever you are, you are one with the clouds and one with the sun and the stars you see.  You are one with everything.  That is more true than I can say, and more true than you can hear.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

Streaming clouds

Spring is amazing.  It started out as it always does with slow growth.  Then we had a heat wave and life came bursting out, perhaps a little too soon.  But now that things are back to the usual, seasonable way of life, spring has just… stalled.  Flowers that bloom and leave fairly quickly are holding on, waiting for the next wave of warmth to move on to their next phase of life.

Fruit blossom

Fruit blossom edited in Pixlr.

The tulips and daffodils still look wonderful even after all this time in bloom.

A big, beautiful Great Blue Heron has been coming around every day.  Sometimes it looks like he’s courting the pink flamingos.

A gnome has moved into the garden area near the deck.

He seems pretty content.

Foliage of the Golden Dawn Redwood tree. (One of the new trees we recently planted.)

Dandelions and violets are scattered across the lawns and meadows, creating a beautiful sea of yellow, purple, and green.  I have not been able to capture that in a photograph, but I’ll keep trying.  The early dandelions have already gone to seed.

Make a wish

The days are warming up again, although the nights are still pretty cold.  I picked our first asparagus spear today.  There are plenty more coming up.  They should be ready to pick by Sunday or Monday.

Sunset in the woods.

We have a full and fun weekend planned.  That means I get out of shoveling dirt for our newest project:

Stay tuned...

I’ll tell you all about it soon.  In the meantime, thank you for visiting on this gorgeous Friday.  It’s going to be a good evening to sit on the deck and watch the sunset.  We might be bottling beer tonight, too, if you’d like to stick around for that.  M brewed a lager over the winter months and it’s time to pour it into bottles, cap them, and let it finish the final fermentation (the part where it carbonates and develops all those lovely little bubbles).  All volunteer bottle cappers are entitled to help themselves to a homebrew or two (or more, if you really want more).

Yesterday's sunset. No color editing needed, but I did soften it up a little.

Have a great weekend!

P.S.  I signed up for this today.  It looks like it will be tons of fun.  The event I signed up for is in July so I have plenty of time to get ready for it.  In case you didn’t see it, Automattic’s Worldwide WP 5k is on April 29th.  Anyone want to join me?  I did it last year along with a few of my blogmates.  You don’t have to decide right now.  Go read the post I linked to and get back to me if you’re going to play along.

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