ANSWER: 
From shoveling out to get the CoCoRaHS cylinder to melt some snow and get the water content.
The birdbath from yesterday’s Bluebird post after 6-7 inches of snow.
See who came to get a drink today? Looks kinda deep to me! He shows up better when sitting on the frog’s head.
And, no, I have not seen any bluebirds today. I almost did not see any of my Buddhas either.
Buddha in a blanket?
Here on the Eastern Shore they have a saying that if snow hangs around,
it is waiting for more. And with the temps in the 20s, I was preparing for the next snow today when I happened to glance out the kitchen window and thought I saw a bit of blue where I seldom see any blue…
Forgetting my chores, I looked around the back yard and could not believe my eyes. Scattered around the yard were well over a dozen bluebirds (and spouses) sitting in the bushes,
on various perches,
and even on St Fwankie’s head!
Try as I might, I could not get more than 5 or 6 bluebirds in any one picture frame.
So, I gave up since I had to go to work, but imagine my excitement when I came home and saw 11 of them and 
It is the most popular watering spot in town as it is the only unfrozen water out there. It is usually empty in the morning as the deer come to visit at night along with raccoons, possums, and the gray fox family.
Where is Spring, you say! Here we have daffodils, pansies, even the forsythia is opening… the late camellias are starting and I swear I saw a little color on a couple early azaleas. I did! But if you listened to that dumb groundhog up in Philadelphia, well, I am sure you must be disappointed. You can see a picture of this liar on this blog: http://thefrogandpenguinn.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-shoot-piano-player.html.
Very possumly Phil should be retired – a suggestion that he can’t refuse, kind of retirement… I, the Onley Proud member of the Possum Prognosticator’s Club, President of Possum Patrol (always on the lookout for lying 
But I digress… Just how accurate is that dumb groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil? According to StormFax Weather Almanac, Phil has been right 39 percent of the time since 1887. It is amazing that he still has a job. I, on the other hand can never be replaced. Not only is my Prediction record Perfect, but where else can you find an animal this cute who eats copperheads for snacks, catches mice and rats and all sorts of buglies and does NOT ever get rabies? Can you beat that with a stick? Impossumble.
My human will tell you, “It always snows on the daffodils.” 
(If you were a possum you would find that hairlarious!)
OK, so it is only 5 snowflakes an hour right now. Hang on. Just wait! You’ll see!
The dragonflies have almost all disappeared. The yard is now filled with butterflies flitting from place to place. I have several butterfly bushes, phlox, blue sage, and fall camellias all in bloom to keep them happy. 
This is my back yard- the water was up over the bottom step of one of the barns, the water was half way up the tires on this little trailer. The rest of the yard was just a pretty little lake! I had planned on cutting the grass yesterday, LOL! Guess that didn't happen! 
The road out front was flooded - remember this is a turtle-back road, so it takes a lot of rain to cover the center of the road! My driveway goes up a slight incline from the road, so it is also amazing to have several inches of water in the driveway. Here you can see the "wake" from the passing car! Waves in the driveway going up from the road!
It was afternoon, but the sky was so dark, the street lights came on. The camera used flash automatically. 
The carport went under water, as did the back yard. The wind blew a few things around, cat's dishes and water bottles for watering the hanging plants floated in the water.
PLAYING POSSUM? OR DEALING WITH THE HEAT? Have you seen that new commercial out where the kids have a "pet" possum... it is on the ground looking dead... the kids whine to their father that their possum is dead... he says, "No, its just playing possum, leave him alone." And then it pops up and hisses at them. I have NO idea what the commercial is trying to sell, I just watch the possum and wait for him to roll over and hiss.
The weather has been horrible lately, as I am sure you are aware. Hot does not even begin to describe the 100 degree plus temps many of us have been experiencing. So if you can't jump in the pool to cool off, how does a tiny animal cool off? Possum Pics are from friend Bobbie... Its all in the posture...
the Rascal...
Punkin...
Spook...
The snow geese are on the move again - huge flocks have been flying over. When I say huge, I am talking thousands Really. They make so much noise, it is easy to keep track of them. The ponds are snow white, some of the fields are white... I am not a farmer, so I think it is beautiful. I understand not everyone feels this way. But they don't eat any of my crops. If I had to worry about that, one goose would clean up my garden in short order! But, It feeds us... and I still find it exciting to go out in the yard and pick something I am going to eat for lunch or dinner... or pick berries for my cereal. No chemicals, not even any chemical fertilizers, and my cow manure comes from field grazed cows... remember? Like they used to do? Cows in the pasture? What a novel idea. Home grown food. Not crap from China or some other country with worse rules than we have, and folks, we have bad rules when you consider GMOs, pesticides, herbicides, and tons of chemical fertilizers. If you are close to my age, you will have noticed food just doesn't taste like you remember it from when you were a kid, does it? Even many of the tomatoes from farm markets taste like cardboard these days. Why? They have been genetically modified so they look prettier, grow bigger, ripen faster... Didja ever notice cherry tomatoes are sweeter than regular tomatoes? The goal is not to take all that flavor and stretch it into a huge tomato, so it is sweeter. Now the big thing is grape tomatoes. They grow fast, are harvested in weeks, and have tough skins so they can stand rough treatment without bruising. But how do they taste to you? Lots of chemicals in those tiny red things.
Way too wet to pack into anything. The water content was .67 inches, so we did get a good amount of wet-stuff, but with the temps never getting below 35 degrees, most of it melted as soon as it hit. These are white camellias on the bush to the right.
If we had had today's temps with that snow, we would have had 2-3 inches of white stuff waiting for us. It is 29 right now. (Supposed to make it up to 70 by Thurs!) It did bring a load of birds to the feeders and brought this little fellow back to the redbud. See the snow on the branch???? Look carefully or you will miss it!
BTW, this posting is just for certain people who asked to see our great snow!
It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but that is not a complaint… not even really an excuse for not staying in touch, but time has been short for blogging with so many other things to worry about. I have tried to keep up with some of you in private emails as blogger is being uncooperative again. Once again, storms have changed people’s lives. My cousin lost their cabin on the Susquehanna River up near Wilkes Barre, PA. But, that could have been their primary residence, so while a serious loss, they still have their home and all their belongings. And no one lost their lives – most important of all. Check off that little box on your gratitude list!
Normally this is a hectic time of year anyway, tons of things to do as summer winds down, a dozen events going on before it gets too cold, sometimes having to run from one event in the morning to another in the afternoon or evening. I feel like my friend, Ralph, bless his heart, who is running for Senate again and is trying to be in 5 places at once and still maintain a practice at Children’s Hospital. As I listened to his schedule yesterday, I just shook my head wondering how he does it all. But, he is much younger and in better health and has a team making all his arrangements. I am feeling my age! But keeping going keeps me going. Does that make any sense to you? I know if I quit and put my feet up, I won’t be getting back up.
My auntie up in the Wilkes Barre area had to be evacuated. This was not an easy thing to do as she was one of the hard heads who stayed in her house back during Hurricane Agnes (39 years ago) and had folks coming by boat bringing food and water to her thru the 2nd floor window. But, for some folks, Lee brought more flooding and destruction than Agnes. The river went up to 43 feet. It was a shallow muddy puddle when I crossed it this summer to see her. But, as of last night, she is back in her apartment in her senior apartment building, full of praise for her son and DIL for treating her like royalty (which she is, of course!) My only regret is I was not up there to do anything for her – BUT, my house (up there) is on the other side of 2 rivers with lots of flooding creeks in-between Wilkes Barre and White Haven.
Here on the shore, actually, up in Delaware, one little town received 14 inches of rain in about 6 hours. I have been in the Seaford area when it was under water, drove home from PA in 9 inches of water on Route 13 just before they closed it. Talk about timing! That was June, 2006. We saw cars with water up to their roofs in parking lots, drove past houses with water up to the front doors. So sad!
Anyway, it is very busy here taking care of my own commitments and worrying about family and friends. So, if I neglect you a little bit, forgive me. I will catch up maybe sometime in November!
I hope you have made out all right in the storms!
The calendar tells me that it will soon officially be summer. The thermometer says it is here and has been for a week. The refreshing chill of the morning is history, it seems. I miss needing long sleeves first thing in the morning. My world, so drab not too long ago, is now a contest of greens – each plant is trying to out-green the other. This is about as green as it gets – the end of May. It does not take long for the heat of the summer to dry things up, coat the leaves with dust and make folks grateful for their air-conditioners. I have a love/hate relationship with my air conditioner. I am grateful for the comfort it brings, but I hate to have to use it. I long for my Pocono summers and dream of the Maine island summers of my youth. I have been so fortunate to have spent my summers sampling the climates of many different areas. How lucky is that?
The desert areas of Turkey are about to go back to being deserts. They have been blooming like crazy this year, so I have been told. It is a long, long time since I lived in Turkey, a long time since I saw the beauty of the desert in the spring. Interestingly, I did not mind the dry heat at all, so different from the stifling humidity here. The normally dead looking brown earth gets covered in blankets of beautiful colors and delicious fragrances. If you have never had a bit of desert experience, you don’t know what you’ve missed. Ok, backing up – I am not talking about what my father called “the serious desert,” the sand deserts, the huge blowing, shifting dunes, but the miles and miles of “scrub or barren” land, land that looks like it would not grow anything most of the year… land with cactus, sage, the tumbling tumbleweed type of landscape. Oh, but that month in the spring, sometimes it lasts a bit longer, but that month of awesome flowering, of color, is a month of pure magic.
Here, far from the desert, the air is heavy in the morning with fragrances from so many sources. A visitor once said it felt like you had to push your way thru the sweetness in the air just to get to the car. We have magnolias in bloom, honeysuckle, and the locust trees are just finishing. Even holly trees are fragrant during most of May as they pollinate and make new holly berries. The air is also heavy with the sounds of birds, baby birds begging to be fed, parents fighting to protect their nests, robber birds like crows scouting around to steal eggs or even unguarded babies. Then there are the grackles, the noisy, noisy grackles squawking at each other in the mulberry trees, bragging about what ever grackles brag about – or perhaps they are complaining. Is that what it is? Their noise sometimes grates on my nerves; I hate to admit it.
The grass is wet with dew; strings of pearls hang from the bushes as the spiders wait for breakfast to blunder by. My shoes get soaked as I wander thru the yard in the morning looking at all the beauty around me… late peonies, irises, roses. Even the honeysuckle, a truly invasive “weed” in most cases, is beautiful in the early morning light. Delicate. Beyond fragrant.
The Mountain Laurel has been blooming. I am always amazed that it has survived another year. Friends laugh as I have brought rocks from PA to put around them to make them feel more at home. (We have NO naturally occurring rocks here on the shore. But you can now buy them at garden centers!)
The garden is coming along. The bees are having a good time with all the flowers on the squash, zucchini and cucumbers. I spotted my first cukes of the year this morning – about the size of a kosher dill. They will be ready to pick later this week. I have my first tiny tomatoes, not much bigger than a pea, but there they are. I can almost taste them. I ate my first homegrown lettuce the other day. Best salad I ever had! And we cooked MY peas for supper. I wonder why that gives me such a high!
I guess it is good that having this garden does give me a high, because the work is almost too much sometimes. But I keep in mind the fun of going out and picking enough beans for dinner. And then picking beans (or cukes, or tomatoes) to share with others. And folks covet my produce. They know I do not use any chemicals – no pesticides, ever!
This morning, when I opened the back door, can of Tuna in my hand for Punkie and Spook, I was hit with the almost over powering scent of almost summer. I had to walk out into the yard and just breathe the smells in. I thought of folks in cities who breathe in the fumes of vehicles, exhaust, garbage, that tarry smell of black top in the sun… I thought about the sounds that they hear as I listened to my birds fussing, begging, or just singing their morning songs. Are they thanking their idea of god for another day? Did someone just say thanks for the drink in the bird bath out in the yard?
Then I heard another noise… a soft leaf rustling sound and the snapping of tiny branches. I quietly walked out a bit further. There was a doe standing on her hind legs pulling a branch down from the mulberry tree, chomping down as many berries as she could while the birds fussed at her for eating all their berries – like there isn’t a whole tree full? Or maybe even several trees? The mulberry trees are so heavy with berries this year, I actually had to cut some branches off where they were hanging down into my garden. I stood there, barely breathing, glad the wind was blowing in my direction watching the doe eat when I noticed movement closer to the ground. She had her fawn with her. At first I thought it was my cat, Punkin … no wait, it WAS Punkin, oh where is my camera when I need it! Punkin sat there and watched the doe eating from the tree, the fawn eating (?) the berries that had fallen to the ground. 
The bad news is that this year’s new supply of mosquitoes has arrived. I am SOOOOO allergic to bug bites. I hate using sprays, but I pay a huge price. Yesterday, I tried working out in the yard in long pants and a long sleeved shirt. I didn’t last very long. I had to wait until around 7 to go back and cut grass and finish my chores.
It is hard to believe that there is still over 100 inches of snow on the ground in some mountainous areas out west. From my CoCoRaHS coordinator this morning:
As of a few days ago we still had some CoCoRaHS volunteers with snow
left on the ground. Two of our stations in CA, where snowfall had been
so great that it buried residential power lines, still had over 100" of
snow remaining on the ground earlier this week. Here in Colorado we're
waiting for the warm weather to finally arrive and when it does later
this week -- look out. We have huge amounts of snow left in our
mountains -- from 25 to as much as 90 inches of snow water equivalent
(SWE) still up on the slopes in the northern portion of our state --
much, much more than usual. With the sun nearly overhead and the summer
solstice right around the corner, the snow will be melting fast (1-2" of
SWE per day when it gets warm) and the rivers surging.
Friends out in the Midwest can’t even get into their gardens – the land is just too soggy.
Here on the Shore, we are in a state of moderate drought. We don’t need the floods others have been having, but we sure could use some rain. Go figure. How is your garden growing? Still have snow? Is your garden under water? Or do you have to go out there and water every day?
I HAVE PROBABLY POSTED THIS TITLE BEFORE –
But, here in VA, when it snows in the end of March, it snows on much more than the onions, or daffodils, but the good thing is, the snow does not hang around. Often it barely covers the ground. So, I have learned to grab the camera early because sometimes the snow is gone by the time I hit ‘publish.’ So, I will share a bit of last snow beauty. 
It is the time when many of the camellias are in bloom. Pink Perfection 
Red Emperor…
White on white (this is a 12 footer)… 
Know what this is? Snow on the PussyWillow, up about 15 feet.
When we flew our first flights over Libya, I bought a new Peace Rose bush as my prayer for Peace. I hope it does not fall on deaf ears.
The snow filled Buddha’s lap as he sat out back and reminded me to think thoughts of love and compassion, and it fell on St Francis as he watched over Spook taking a drink from the slightly slushy birdbath.
May thoughts of Peace and Compassion fill your heart this spring day. (Guess what? It is all melted – just that fast.)
