Green & chilly spring days

We are in that glorious phase of spring where the open space around our house is greening up and starting to look really nice as if we spend a lot of time caring for it. Soon we will be in that stage where it's obvious that they are mostly non-native species, and lots of noxious weeds at that. We have a few areas of actual yard grass, 2 areas in fact, that we seeded last spring after doing a bit of moving dirt around with a day tractor rental.

One grass area is on the east side of the house by the fruit trees, making it really nice in the evenings in the heat of summer. The dogs and Little M and I go back there after summer suppers, when the shadows start getting long, and we relax in the shade. Sometime this spring & summer we are hoping to build a play structure, and it will go on the edge of this patch of grass, in the late evening shade from the house. I can imagine hot summer evenings spent pushing Little M on the swings and sending her down the slide, the dogs relaxing in cool green comfort beside us.

Ah, the warmth of summer... It has been rather windy and chilly the past couple days here. On Wednesday I volunteered at the region's Envirothon competition, which was fun as back when I was in high school my friends and I competed in Envirothon as well. In fact, I partly thank Envirothon for where I am today in the work world -  employed in the biology field. The poor students must have been pretty cold, though, and not all of them came prepared for the windy chilly weather we experienced. When the sun was out, it was nice, but unfortunately that wasn't all of the time!

At home, even though it has been cold some days and many nights (we even had a frost yesterday morning), we have had enough warm periods and sunny days to get the fruit trees up and going. The apricot in particular is almost ready to burst into bloom. I took a bunch of pictures that I was planning on sharing, but at the moment I think my computer is needing a reboot and I can't seem to upload anything... Oh well! I hope everyone has a great weekend!