Hi, everyone!
Now that it’s April, I’m really looking for more signs of spring. The cherry blossoms are already open in Japan and the tulips are blooming in the Netherlands! In Fairport, more of my crocus and snowdrop friends are blooming. When Grandma and I were cleaning up the final batches of branches from the back yard, we saw this deer track in the dirt. We must have a very big deer wandering around!
When the temperature got up to 55 degrees F. on a dry day, Grandma took me to Highland Park. We knew it was way too early for the lilacs to be blooming, but Grandma hoped the groundhogs might be sunning at the openings of their burrows. She likes to take new groundhog photos every year to put on Groundhog Day cards. When we got to Highland Park, we could see lots of branches down from the windy Wednesday weather we had. The lawns looked like our back yard before we cleaned it up, and there were some really big plants damaged, too! I was glad to see that the buds on the magnolia trees looked healthy!
We walked along the hillside where the lilacs are planted and saw lots of groundhog burrows, but no groundhogs! Some of the burrows were full of dead leaves, so it looked like the groundhogs hadn’t even used them yet this spring. Then Grandma took me back uphill to Lamberton Conservatory to see the spring flower display. Guess what? There was a groundhog right in front of the Lamberton entrance!
The spring flowers at Lamberton Conservatory have been on display for a while, so some of them are past their prettiest stage. It was still fun to see them and remember visiting them with James and Thomas in previous years. I made friends with a new flock of button quail. Look at how many different colors they are! Then I visited my turtle friends and enjoyed the tropical plants that remind me of Hawaii. Before we left Highland Park, Grandma and I helped the grounds crew by picking up a few branches. We’re getting really good at doing that!
The day after we went to the park, my first daffodil friend at Grandma’s house bloomed! Then we had a rainy day, another nice day, a steady rain day and then snow again! The ground was warm enough that the snow melted, but everything was really soggy outside! It was nice again for Palm Sunday, and I was happy to see my daffodil friend had weathered the weather! All of the colors of my crocus friends are in bloom now, too.
The afternoon of Palm Sunday, Grandma and Grandpa took me out to the bay. The water level in the bay is a lot higher than last year! We went to the lighthouse to watch sunset for the first time this year. It was a pretty sunset! On Monday morning I visited my Sodus shrubbery friends to see how they had managed the winter. The deer ate a lot of branches off the euonymus around the corner from the rhododendron, but the deer fence protected all the rhododendron flower buds! Grandma says the deer just saved us the trouble of pruning the euonymus!
Monday was a really warm day. The temperature got up to 80 degrees F.! Grandma thought the groundhogs might be out at Highland Park, so we went back to look. The earliest flowers to bloom at Highland Park are in the Poets’ Garden, so we went there first. It was very pretty! Then we walked through the magnolia grove and found the very first blossom open!
The lilac buds are getting fatter and greener, but there were still no groundhogs out around the burrows on the side of the hill. I guess we’ll have to wait for more warm weather before we see the groundhogs out and about!
The warm day encouraged a lot more of my flower friends at Grandma’s house to bloom! My first daffodil friend has lots of company, there are clumps of blooming crocus, and the forsythia flowers opened up. Even though we’ve seen deer tracks in the back yard, the blossom buds on the Fairport rhododendron are still there! I’m looking forward to the trees getting their leaves back and the rest of the spring flowers blooming!
Love,
Lion-san
We are glad the deer haven’t eaten the rhododendron plants at either place! It is too bad that you couldn’t find a groundhog by his hole. It is nice there are more flowers out now. Moose-san has about 8 doe cousins that visit our yard frequently. We haven’t seen any groundhogs here yet.
Hello Lion-san. We have Forsythia blooming and Andromeda coming into bloom. Scilla, a few daffodils and hellebores are blooming. When I selected hellebores for our garden, I selected ones that look up to the sky rather than ones that look down to the earth. We have many hellebores now and they look so pretty in bloom now. I saw a female bluebird, two cardinals and a robin and other birds here in the last few days. We have a resident fox we see once in a while. We think he lives in an abandoned ground hog/wood chuck hole on our property. Our red fox is very beautiful. Spring is here and coming more and more. I love spring.