May 09, 2005
(note: well, this is what we get for playing at work... we were writing a new page for the middle of the month when a business call came in and we screwed up. Now, this page is rewritten as best we can soooo...

For most people, the harbinger of spring is the return of the robins and other birds, new flowers and what-not. For us, it's additions to these pages and a new crop of photos... many taken on our own, small plot. Of course, this is precipitated by new blossoms and other signs of renewing life... so we want to take this opportunity to share, with you, what's going on this spring.

Spring represents the renewal of many things... trees coming back to life, the greening of grasses and the return of dandylions - of course.

After a slow start, being at least a week behind schedule, suffering a late snow and unexpected cool weather, the magnolia tree took to the sun and put on a wonderful show! The first six on this page (as of this date) are from this years crop. They suffered a bit from a late frost but recovered nicely and put on a stunning display.

This is the view we get to enjoy when in the sunroom:

Once these petals fall they will be replaced by abundant greenery in the form of leaves almost as large as those of an avocado. In the meantime, we have a delightful flourish of pinks and whites to pleasure us.

And this is what we're looking at through the sunroom windows...

We've got to be amongst the luckiest people in the world... We have a simply wonderful view from our office windows at the front of the house:

As we step out the front, onto the porch, the city tree at the end of our walk is in full bloom. It appears to be a decorative cherry of some sort - just filled with delightful, small, white flowers. On the right, at the end of our lawn near the sidewalk, are bing cherries while hedelfingen cherries (another variety of sweet black cherry, is in bloom on the left, close to the house. To the right is our peach tree and on the left, near the sidwalk is the apple tree.

The cherry blossoms are up and out we went looking to see if there was a new, beautiful shot of those. We found bees hard at work! (The first two pics on that page.) We estimate about twice the volume of cherries as last year - but it remains to be seen - what we will get to eat. Last year we lost just about all the fruit on our cherry trees to a wind storm. We hope to be luckier this year.

This year, for the first time, we get to see peach blossoms, pretty, small, pink flowers on our tree. We estimate up to, about, two dozen peaches. Initially we saw, only, under one half dozen so 24 is a delightful surprise! Being the first year, we're not too optimistic that we will get to enjoy fruit but we sure are enjoying the sites!

Our apple tree is in, only, it's first full summer on our lawn. In theory, you're supposed to plant your trees at the end of summer, however, if you don't buy 'em early in spring you just don't find them so in it went last spring and it struggled through the hot, dry summer. Our apple tree is a multi with Granny Smiths, Macintosh's and Northern Spy. So far, the Smiths and Macs are showing some signs of life. The Smiths seem to be the earliest with the Macs lagging a bit. The Spy shows the smallest sign of budding though we're not entirely sure of it's future but we're confident since our tree weathered its first winter well. We don't anticipate any flowers/fruit. We'll be satisfied to see the tree grow and, perhaps, next year we'll have apples.

Our daffodils are up, too, of course. As the roses, they aren't large in numbers but very healthy ... quite beautiful. Next year we will have more, nicer roses and daffodils. The miniatures (daffodils) barely showed themselves, this being their first full summer... Perhaps, next year, we'll have some to photograph.

Well, we don't spend every waking moment at our desks or in the lawn. We do other things. The gift of a Kitchenaid mixer has brought baking back. While pita is a staple around here, having a dough hook makes it all so easy and gives us a chance to discover some of our old favourites like this oatmeal sesame bread.

After a long haitus it's fun to be baking again.

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