My Indiana Home/ Blooming forsythia

How quickly this spring has come on ... 2 weeks ago on St. Patrick's Day when I went to my first "crop," a scrapbooking event our agency held as a fund raiser which, along with my friend Chris, has gotten me into the wonderful worlds of digital and real life scrapbooking, and I've been scouring the stores for good deals on tools and supplies, and printers, and learned more about printing digital and scanned pix at home and at Walmart, and about online photo centers, and got to do two really cool programming type projects in Excel at work, and I volunteered at Foster Family night, and the children got to play outside, there was no color in the world - after that 12 inches of snow and sub zero temperatures in February. I felt sorry for the early migrating birds and put out seed for them. And we set our clocks back an hour and started getting up in the dark again - which eliminated some of the beautiful sunrise photo ops I was getting before going to work. And here it is not even April yet, and yesterday I saw my first redbud in bloom. The forsythia has been in bloom for about a week - here's the bush I planted last summer. Technically this is our second spring at this new location. The grass is emerald green and needing to be mowed shortly. The jonquils are blooming. My tulips are up. The mint has started to show up - as have my bleeding hearts, and columbine, and irises, and hydrangeas. The peony bushes just started coming up this week. New vinca or is it venca is coming up out of the ground from what I planted from Marilyn's garden and it's blooming. The violets are coming up out of the ground this week. The wild violets are up and the creeping charlie is in bloom. My clematis bush is starting to leaf out. And it's not even April! =:o My favorite picture that eludes me is a pretty red cardinal who comes to perch on my magnolia bush about mid morning - right outside my kitchen window. And yesterday evening he was perched on my blooming forsythia. My lilac bush is leafing out. My daisies and my lily of the valley and mums and flox gloves aren't showing any signs of life yet - and my japanese lilacs - and day lilies - and my sweet peas, leaving me to wonder if they survived the winter or if I did something wrong. The sweet peas that I finally got started, lived until that February cold snap. They never bloomed last year - so I wonder if they will come up again. How quickly the winter sped by! The ducks are back and swimming in rain puddles and the red-winged blackbirds are perching on dried stalks. This weekend is Palm Sunday. Oh, and the smaller trees and bushes are leafing out - so that the woods has that green tinge like you usually don't see until mid-April!