this bud's for you

 Things are slowly starting to pop here!

Our lilacs are slowly starting to bud out.

Roses, too!

I like to celebrate the beginning of March with a little spring celebration.  I pull out our robin dishes and we enjoy a spring-themed snack on the porch, rain or shine.  This year I made strawberry cookies.  They didn't quite turn out as I'd planned, but it felt good to be outside in the soft breeze!  

Better late than never...I started my sweet pea seeds this weekend.  I should be seeing some green in a couple of weeks.  I also found an older package of ranunculus and anemone corms.  They really should've been planted last year, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt to try to force some roots.

First a soak...

...then planted and placed in our cool attic.  I'll know in a couple of weeks if these are viable!

I also decided to start winter sowing.  It's late...really late.  In years past, I would've had these completed in January and I'd already be seeing some green...but it doesn't really matter.  We've got a cold spell coming up.  I planted my cool weather favorites:  foxgloves, snapdragons, corn cockle, bachelor buttons, etc.  Late April, I'll start the hot weather stuff.

We've been taking advantage of this warm spell by hiking when we're able to get away.

The wood frogs have been going crazy!  Their chorus is almost deafening, even during the day.  We saw plenty of them in the water...

But more exciting, we saw eggs...so many eggs.

This mass of eggs was at least 3' long!

They'll hatch in a few weeks, and I can't wait to see the tadpoles.  

At home, I've been knitting away on my Shadow cardigan.  This is the back panel, halfway done:

It's a miracle that I complete any sweater, because the sizing is so confusing to me.  You're not just knitting a S/M/L/XL/XXL.  You're technically supposed to take specific measurements at multiple places on your body, not possible if you're knitting for someone else, or a smaller size for future you.  You start at the bust.  When you're measuring yourself for a bra, you measure your under bust and across the fullest part of the bust.  I'd assumed that the same applied for a sweater, but no.  Apparently you measure your high bust, which means that you run a measuring tape under your armpits and using that number in your calculations.  That's a few inches less than your full bust, of course, so this sweater I've been knitting was actually the wrong size.  ARGH!!  Thankfully, there was only a six-stitch difference in the two sizes, so I was able to eat up those extra stitches in the side panels.  It still looks a bit big, but I'm hoping that it won't grow much when I block it at the end.  Learning experience, right?!?

Anyway, we're going to continue to get outside as much as we can, getting a cat-level of enjoyment out of it!  :)

Have a great week!