What Month Are We In Again?

Hello! According to the weather stats in this morning's paper, we had a high of 48 yesterday, 15 degrees warmer than the norm for the date. It was sunny as well - which also is abnormal for this time of year! So I took advantage of our pastoral weather to take some photos outside. As I did so, I could pretend that we'd already gotten through winter and it was April 10th instead of January 10th!

Headed over to a local city park along a body of water, where various waterfowl were enjoying the unseasonable weather:

Canada Geese.

White duck (that's just what I call it; it might really be a goose) and mallard friends. I always feel a little sorry for the white duck since it's the only one of its kind among the mallards, Canada geese and gulls. But he's been hanging around the waterfront at this park for over a year now, so I guess he (or she) is happy enough!

Gulls enjoying the sun. 


I know that these just look like typical shots of waterfowl, but in order to get the above photo I had to walk on the boardwalk along the waterfront. If you're reading this from elsewhere, you may wonder why I would mention where I was walking. Well, typically by this time of year I wouldn't even be able to walk along the boardwalk - the city doesn't maintain it during the winter, so normally the boardwalk would be buried under drifts of snow  on this date! So the fact that I could walk on it yesterday was a novelty.

And also for folks not around here, the body of water is Lake Macatawa, an inlet of Lake Michigan. 


I returned home and lingered a bit longer outside, picking up fallen branches and noticing that some of the perennials I'd cut down in the fall are beginning to grow back due to the mild weather and lack of snow cover (we've basically had just three snowfalls thus far this season, with melting between each storm). 

There was still a small patch of arugula and leaf lettuce growing in the old wheelbarrow that I like to use as a planter, so I picked a handful:

If I'd known it was going to stay this mild this far along into winter, I would have sown some spinach seeds in the wheelbarrow as well!


Alas, all good things must come to an end - we have today for one more day of mild weather,then lake effect snow is supposed to move in starting tomorrow. How much snow we'll end up with remains to be seen. It will be hard to take after such nice weather!

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