mandible mouthful

 Beautiful warm mornings for hiking!

I love seeing the woods wake up.

red maple

rusty blackhaw

spicebush

silver maple

anemone ran.

senecio aus.

Sometimes, when looking into the woods, the woods looked back! Someone did, anyway.

white-tailed deer

Things are stirring everywhere!

american bullfrog

There's definitely plenty of water for frogs to play in.  :)

At home, I'm picking the last of the early daffodils and the start of the late daffodils.

I love bringing them into the house!

When I was out picking daffodils, I noticed that carpenter bees were bypassing the flower throats and stabbing directly into the nectar pod behind the petals.

You can see how short their tongues are...

That makes it difficult for them to penetrate tube-throated flowers, like daffodils.  Instead, they use their cutting mandibles...so helpful when they're chewing wood fibers...to cut directly into the nectar pod.  The flowers are still getting pollinated by other visitors...

northern paper wasp

...and the bees get the nutrition they need.  So interesting!

In other news around the house, both sugar snap and sweet peas are thriving and ready to go into the ground this week!

I'm getting some nice growth in the outside mini greenhouses, too.  If our weather remains above freezing for the next two - three weeks, AND if the forecast is positive, then I will be able to put out the summer flower seeds by the third week of April!  Hooray!  I've got a lot of great plans for the garden this year, shoulder permitting.

Have a great week!