Tiffy, Nikki is actually a German Shepard-Border Collie mix, but it's kinda hard to see all her hair in a picture (she is a HAIRY thing!) She definitely has the hearding instinct of a Border Collie (she watches out for the cats and defends them no matter how mean some of them are to her, despite the fact she could eat them in two gulps). Karen and PV, a Bahamavention sounds really nice right about now. This must be why my dad goes home to Jamaica this time every year since I was a kid! Hoehum, I wish I could PASS on the bragging rights (LOL)! Some things it's better to be on the low end of. But I look at the positives of it all. This will be good for the farmers (and my garden too). And a lot of people around here are on a well (we still have ours too). No one should have to call for water this coming summer (it's 50 bucks a delivery!). Imagine that people were trudging through all this kind of stuff during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812! Even with horse and buggies before cars existed! Yeow. Here's a few more pictures: One of our cats managed to get under the porch yesterday morning and was scared to come back out. There's 5 feet of snow in that spot, but it's pretty "good packin'". Still, I don't know how Mario managed to get in there: Here's Nikki, the "Snow Doggers" we call her! I still want to catch a pic of her lying on top of a snow bank, as she loves to do: Here she is again, looking like a rabid racoon...lol. (And yes, that is the way the porch looked yesterday, after it snowed again): We're going snowshoeing this morning, so hopefully I'll have more pictures from AWAY from the house for a change :-)

Wonderful picture. I love our cardinals. We don't have as many Blue Jays as we did several years ago. They are such fun to watch in the bird baths and fountain-too funny. I think West Nile practically wiped them out around here. I so enjoy snowy days like this. A lot of the birds sit on the deck all puffed up to keep warm, everything is so clean and quiet, and the yard looks magical-can't see those weeds-lol. Our snow started just when it was predicted (9 am), but we are supposed to have only 2-4" or 1-2" depending on the line of the storm. Lots of starlings (greedy things) at the feeders. I keep chasing them away, so the others can get their share and now they have all seemed to disappear. I am hoping we get as much snow as all our Tarheel and Virginia neighbors further south! Time to check the weekend trivia on the other side! Stay cozy all.

Finally back home after a temporary fix on my heater has it running again. Hope to get seeds out now to everyone promised. Sorry for the setback here. Got my seeds from Remy (Sample Seeds), of Salvia subrotunda, a red flowering subshrub Salvia, that is supposed to reseed here, Frank's Extra Large Dill, a dill that is supposed to be super tall, about 6-10', so wanted to try it. Dill doesn't generally like our hot summers, so usually wilts when it gets hot, so will let you know on this one, Salvia coccinea 'Lady in Red', Nicotiana sylvestris, Phlox paniculata New Hybrids, and Victorian Dwarf tomatoe. Will start seeds this week. On Austrian pines, I have two. One is about 20-25' tall, but very fat and squat, the other is about 12-15' tall. They have never lost any branches to ice or other elements so far. But they are so thick, the branches are so heavy and thick, and none of the lower branches have been removed either. I can't foresee them ever going down in a storm because of their sturdiness. Tiny Mama Wild Kitty came up for food yesterday finally. She is so precious. Very small, predominantly white with black spots. We hope to get her spayed this spring or summer (an effort of us neighbors) as she has become more used to contact with humans now and will come to us and let us pet her. Took a very long time. Wish someone would adopt her and Zena, the male Manx, who is very friendly and sweet. Kenna has been very sick with diarrhea, vomiting and chest congestion. I've never seen her down this long. She usually springs back after a couple of days, and it has been 4 or 5 now. The black birds discussed are probably Starlings. They love suet. I have had them on my suet feeder quite a lot, and of course, they tend to scare the other birds away. I have never seen the Cowbirds which don't come to my feeder or suet. They scrounge on the ground for food. especially food dropped by us humans. We had tons of them at Leadership Square when I worked there, because people would drop scraps of their lunch, etc. The grackles don't come to the feeders either. However, the Eurasian Collard Doves will come to scrounge on the ground for seeds or pieces of suet dropped by other birds. I wish I had my little white-breasted nuthatches back, but think all those sparrows scared them off, too. Have a nice day everyone! Susan

I am so thrilled for everyone who received rain, however small the amount. Any rain is better than none and we all needed it. We got 1.6" in the rain gauge in the main garden, but I think that Thackerville, several miles to our south, might have received more. Their rain puddles this morning were a lot bigger than ours. It's a beautiful mud pit in the garden right now, which is so much lovelier than the dust pit it was before the rain fell. If you were watching on radar, it might have looked like a lot more rain was falling than what we received. We spent most of the day in a dry slot and I was starting to think the rain never was going to actually arrive here. I don't know what our Mesonet station recorded. It got knocked offline early in the afternoon and hasn't come back online yet. Our year-to-date rainfall recorded by our county's co-operative weather observer was showing year-to-date 2014 rainfall of 0.89" before the rain arrived here late in the day, so yesterday's rainfall will really raise the YTD amount quite a bit. It is hard for rainfall to impress me anymore, Scott. After the incredible day in 2009 when we had almost 13" of rain in a 24-hour period, even a good rainfall of 4 or 5" seems like small potatoes. I know we'll probably never have that much rain again in one day, so I kinda cherish the memory of watching the rain fall and fall and fall. I'm glad y'all got enough at the farm to wash in the fertilizer you put down. Everything's gonna look so gorgeous so quickly. My favorite thing about this rain is that it made everything really wet so that we didn't have to go to fires yesterday and today after being out on many long, tedious, wildfires every day from Monday through Friday. We are so wet that I think the workweek is likely to start off pretty quiet too. I'll be able to stay home all week and maybe work in the garden, as long as I wear my mud boots. I wasn't home enough to plant anything last week, so hope to get caught up this week. Now that the rain clouds finally found much of OK, let's hope they make a return trip soon.