That Wacky Cape Cod Spring

It's so nice to see flowers again!  I suppose, overall, this wasn't a bad winter.  Not as compared with 2014 and 2015.  It was the cold mostly that got to me. However, this is also the time of year where I still have a space heater running in the bathroom, but the a/c on in the bedroom and fan in livingroom.

Rose of sharon on the side of the house.

Hyacinth

Japanese andromeda.

A woolly bear making his way across the lawn.  I've seen a couple of them. I thought they only came out in fall but they also come out in spring so they can turn into moths.  It's kind of ironic that I think the caterpillar is so fuzzy and adorable, but I won't hesitate to kill the moth that it turns into if it gets in my house.  

We had a super warm day that turned into an even warmer night on April 29.  The air was so velvety and the moon and stars were so bright.  

I was messing around with exposure times and I like this one with the rainbow reflection on the left.

It was hard to get a decent pic that showed the dark part without overexposing the crescent.

The very next day dawned sunny and cool, but by 3:00 pm, the temperature had dropped significantly and the clouds rolled in.

We'll be back up to warmer temps in no time though. 

Update

I was pretty much housebound all of September again cause the heat and humidity refused to let go. Then we had a ton of cloudy, rainy days which were awesome and very much enjoyed.

When we finally got a dry day, I mowed the lawn for the first time in 2 months.  While I was on the hill outside the shed, I decided to try and clean up the rotted wood bits from when we tried to fix it up.  Of course me being me, I caught my leg on a jagged piece of wood and sliced the crap out of it.

And the fall baking has begun.  I should've either cut this recipe in half or given a bunch away as I'm a tad sick of pumpkin spice now.  They were yummy though!

We both ended up really sick with upper respiratory infections at the end of Sept.  All I could do was watch TV and cross stitch a beaded hummingbird while hacking up a lung.  My diagnosis was a sinus infection.  

We had a cool sunset in Sept too.  Such a sucker for pinky clouds.

This area has a huge problem with wild turkeys.  There are thousands of them and they roam the neighbourhoods in huge flocks, stopping traffic and often trying to attack humans that are trying to shoo them away.  This was as close as I was getting to the ones that wandered into my yard.

They showed up at a most inconvenient time, blocking my driveway when I had to leave for a doctor's appointment.

Pretty moon.

Back in July when I went to Sue's house, she took me to the swap shop down at the Bourne Dump. It's a little house where you can bring gently used items and leave them and the public can take what they want for free.  She handed me a silver metal sphere with holes in and said I could probably do something with it.  I didn't even know what it was, but inside were instructions and it was a rice cooker. 

I sprayed it with multicolour glitter paint then spent quite awhile wiring 266 Czech glass crystals into every single hole.  That was unbelievably time consuming.  I knew I wanted to make it into the planet Saturn but how to do the rings?  My best option was to use a clear plastic shrinky dink sheet, cut it into a circle, and then use glitter puff paint on the edges to make the coloured rings.

I like how it came out!

We're finally starting to feel better but for a nagging cough and being tired all the time too.  I got the Halloween decorations up at the beginning of the month although it took about 3 days when usually it takes an afternoon.  It's just so nice to finally have cool weather.  Hoping to get out and do a few more things before winter hits.

Night Sky Shots

There was a fairly large solar storm a couple of weeks ago which meant the Northern Lights were going to be very active and allegedly visible down here.  I have street lights across from me, and they are on the north side of the street, so it's really hard to see the stars from the front yard.  In the back yard, the north sky is obstructed by trees.  I am pleased with this photo, as it shows the trees and stars very well.  

I was following the Aurora Alerts site, HERE, and saw that it was going to be very active around 6:30 pm and reaching almost all the way down here.  So I went down to the beach, pointed the camera north and started shooting, leaving the aperture open for 30-90 seconds.  

It's funny but standing there on the beach it was so dark I had to use a flashlight, but the light pollution you couldn't see with the naked eye lit up the sky anyway.

I didn't see a thing.  When I got back and downloaded this, I noticed the green tint to the sky.  The jury is still out whether or not that's the aurora or light pollution.

Not sure why the boathouse is lit up electric green, or the trim on the house.

Then one early morning...like WAY early morning (for me)...I took the dogs out and couldn't believe the tiny sliver of moon that was showing.  It was about 5:30 and the sky was actually a really pretty shade of blue because the sky was getting light.  But I didn't feel like dragging the tripod outside when I was still half asleep so I had to free hand it.  It's a bit blurry but hey, no glasses, no coffee and sleepy.

Freakin FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My blogger statistics show that this is my 1500th post since 2006.  Wow.

Temps have been all over the map lately....there was even snow north of Boston the other day....but it appears that spring has finally, FINALLY sprung around here.  It's been a long time coming.  

The crescent moon and Venus put on a nice show last week. 

Daffodils starting to bloom.  Seems that there are more of them in the yard this year than I noticed in years past.

No idea what these are but they are purty.

And their purple counterparts.

These tiny white flowers are on a bush out front.  Again, no clue.

I decided to break out the wind chimes and wind spinners for the tree next to the deck.

The gnome is out.  It's officially spring.

Mid-January Miscellany

Brrrrr it's been a cold month!  But of course it is January in New England so I guess that's to be expected.  At least we haven't had any major snowstorms (yet....knock wood), unlike last year when we were having one blizzard a week for what felt like months on end.  

So I've been making lots and lots of homemade soups.  It's getting to the point where I can no longer eat canned soup because it tastes so gross and doesn't have hardly any veggies in it!  We've been really into homemade chicken soup lately, made with a grocery store roasted chicken that I boil till it falls apart.  That's when my sweetie pie steps in and removes all the bones and skin for me.  Here he is in action, with our very pesty helpful Sagan offering to assist dad with the meat.  "Ai can haz some pwease daddy??"

Peeps was in the kitchen too, of course, giving me the super cute look in the hopes of getting some chicken dropped her way.  "Ai can haz?"

"Can we hep?  We can hep! Pweeeeeeease????"

The Seahawks were in the first round of playoffs on January 10, so I couldn't resist making a small batch of blue & green cupcakes!

And grabbing a bottle of Seattle's Jone's Pure Cane Soda, green apple flavour.

My friends were asking me if I was going to make another batch of cupcakes for the January 18th playoff, so I did.  If you are a superstitious sports fan, you will understand why they asked and why I did it.  They played like chumps the entire day till the final three minutes when they managed to not only pull ahead, but then win in overtime.  Guess I'll be making cupcakes again for the Superbowl.

And I got my no sew blanket done and it came out so great!  It took way longer than the hour the instructions said.  It was a lot of measuring and pinning, not to mention all the cutting and tying.  I don't think I'll do another one but at least I can cross this off the 'crafts to do' bucket list.  It's sooo soft and warm.

Just some dustings of snow which make for pretty pictures as long as I don't have to shovel my way out of the house, and wait for the plow to show up.

Snowing while the sun is out!

But later that day it clouded up and and kept snowing.  The big fluffy flakes were pretty to watch.

Oh this was funny.  One Thursday night after hubs got home, he got a text from his youngest son with a picture.  He hands his phone to me and says, 'I can't see it...it looks like a truck?'  (we have very basic phones with tiny screens).  I laughed and said, 'I think it's you!'  Then it got posted to my Facebook timeline by my stepson's girlfriend.  She snapped it that afternoon as she was on her way home from college classes and happened upon Russell on the same highway.  Such a good boy, staying in the far right lane.

And finally, a beautiful early morning waning crescent moon on the 16th.