Back To Normal? & Other Miscellany

It is so good to no longer be suffering with allergies. No more itchy, swollen, tearing eyes. To be able to leave the house after two months, especially in the lovely weather we're having, is fantastic.

I was up early this morning, putting the feeders back out around the deck. I started bringing them in one evening shortly after dark when I saw movement on the deck and realized a raccoon was in the bird food.

99.9% of my sky pictures are of sunsets. We don't have a good view for sunrises, but I tried this morning anyway.

And as long as I was out there, I picked a bouquet of violets. They are one of my favorite flowers.
The color seems a little pale and the leaves were hardly long enough to pick. I'm thinking the freezes we've had might have something to do with both those deficiencies.

I even went back to the Y this morning for the first time in at least a month. I wasn't sure I'd be able to walk a mile, thought I might have to start off with less than that after basically doing nothing for so long. But I did my mile at the same speed as I was before.

This afternoon we went out and raked two bags of leaves off the flower beds. It was so nice out. Just hope I'm not too stiff and sore tomorrow!

As Bud reported on Facebook a couple days ago, it looks like we are going to have babies after all. I didn't want to get too close to Mama Goose. She was really watching me. She has made a nest in a flower bed next to the pond.

Here you can see her and the new nest in the foreground with what has always been her nesting site on the pond in the background.
The man who takes care of the nest and other pond duties just got back from wintering in Arizona. He pulled the nest to shore and said there were eggs in it and that the bottom hadn't rotted through as it did a couple years ago. The only reason anyone can think of for why she abandoned that nest is that the muskrats may have disturbed her.

Speaking of the muskrats, a licensed trapper has been trying to rid the pond of them. He wasn't having much luck, so now the aforementioned pond caretaker has taken over. Oh, the drama.

There has been an unusually large number of ducks on the pond this year. I've counted as many as twelve.
I don't know much about ducks, a Mallard?

I do know it's interesting (funny? cute?) to see just their bottoms sticking up out of the water.

Plans are to finish the raking tomorrow as well as get some of the deck furniture out and cleaned off.

That's if I'm not to sore/tired. If so, I'll probably do some more reading in this last book of one of my favorite authors. She died last year at 85 years of age. She wrote sixty books. Amazing to consider.


And amazing to be 'back to normal' after so many weeks.