May Day

If you're Russian, today's the day you take your tank out and parade through town with your Army buddies and maybe a bazooka or rocket or two, the rest of us are just glad it isn't April anymore and might actually start getting reliably warm on a daily basis.

I glanced down to see that the tulip buds are this close to popping open.  These particular tulips are a gorgeous shade of dark peach with a lavender tinge to the outside of the petals.  Usually I'm a red or yellow tulip fan but these stole my heart, and having them bloom while the tiny grape hyacinths around them are still in flower is a bonus.  Makes them look even prettier.  Makes it look like I planned it.

I started up the fountain again even though there are chickadees nesting in the nearby birdhouse and we bought the fountain hoping to attract wrens back there.  Chickadees will do in a pinch and we like the fountain.  Someone small likes it too.

Look what came in the mail!  It's our Family Zoo Pass.  It lets us go to the zoo with LC, any other grandchildren that might someday arrive (this is NOT a hint, I want to tempt you to get your own since the pass covers 8 dependent minors which I think makes it even more of a bargain), and 2 guests--every day for a year if we want, and it was only $65 bucks.  How could we pass that up?  I envision lots of zoo time in our future.  Plus it earns us discounts at 160 zoos around the country (I'm looking at you Louisville Zoological Garden), even the Mesker Part Zoo in Evansville, IN, the zoo of my childhood but not the Milwaukee Zoo, dang it.  Oh well.  I'm still excited.

Last night when I came in to fold back the bedspread in preparation for going to sleep I saw a bright square of moonlight on the carpet by the window so I had to get out my camera and go take a picture of the moon.  It wasn't full and it certainly didn't have the rays shooting out of it like the picture shows but it was clear and bright and beautiful, so you get to look at it too.

May 1--Kirk Yarnell, Bald Eagle "Sunrise".  Rooney wrapped her arms around herself trying to keep warm in the minutes before the sun crested the eastern mountains.  She kept her feet still.  She didn't want a twig snap or the crunch of gravel underfoot to cover the sound she had rolled out of her warm bed so early to hear.  The tops of the far mountains began to glow before a thin line of yellow tinted the horizon.  She leaned over her camera set on its tripod to make sure all of the settings were right.  Between one breath and the next light exploded into the sky turning the clouds a hundred shades of gold.  From the mist over the river a dark shape rose, trailing golden drops from its talons.  A bald eagle with its morning catch soared up into the tall pines, its triumphant cry splitting the dawn silence.

It's a gorgeous sunny day out there, not very windy, a perfect day to finish up cleaning away the winter-dead plants and last autumn's leaves caught against the house.  I'm outta here.  I'm craving meatballs.  D'you think Durwood will make some?  I'll go ask.
--Barbara