Signs of Spring in January

I know it's only January 29th and the Groundhog hasn't even yet made his predictions, but today is a beautiful springlike day, currently 71 degrees and sunny, so I just had to go looking for some signs of spring.

And I didn't have to look very far!

The lenten roses don't seem to realize that Lent doesn't start for two more weeks.  Maybe they are predicting an early arrival of Hot Cross Buns.  We can only hope!

We have two plants in our yard, tucked slightly under the deck.  The pink one isn't quite open, but the flowers on the cream colored plant are more progressed.  

The sedum is sending out some green growth.

 This isn't the best of photos, but the mums have some green growth, too.

 The vinca, which grow wild along our south foundation wall have the courage to flower this time of year!

 There are nice little bright green leaves on the roses.

 I meandered down the slope to check on the daffodils, which seem like they are ready to open whenever we get a string of days like this.  See how big the flower heads are already?

 And the iris are up quite a bit, too.

 Since I was at the bottom of the slope, I decided to include a couple of pictures of our little stream.  There are some new sand bars that have formed during the last few bigger downpours and that is changing the course of the stream a little bit.

 I bet the turtles will enjoy crawling up on this mound of sand to sunbathe!

I also noticed that the super market weeping pussy willow plant that I planted last spring after it "bloomed" indoors has a few branches with fuzzy white showing.  I tried, but I couldn't get my camera to focus on the open buds... the lens just wanted to focus on the rocks under our deck which were in the background.  

Likely all these plants will suffer through a few more frosts and maybe some snow before spring is really here, but it is fun to see them showing such promise so early in the year!

Laena and Charlotte

A week ago we were in Charlotte.  We went to meet our new grand-niece, Laena, who was born on 12/19/12 and bring her a quilt.

Then we spent the night downtown, enjoyed a
nice dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery,

and visited a couple of the museums in the city.

The Levine Museum of the New South gave a nice overview of the economy and the social issues that have impacted Charlotte and piedmont region since the Civil War.  Though much of the same story is told in the state museum that we visited in Raleigh earlier this year, we thought that the exhibits were really nicely done and it is a museum well worth visiting.  In their upstairs temporary gallery they had a very unsettling photo exhibit of lynchings.

 I posed under the reflective sculpture in front of the museum of contemporary art, but we chose to visit the Mint Museum of Art and Craft next door.

It housed a nice collection of permanent and special exhibits featuring art of all types.  We enjoyed it a lot and hope to come back and see future exhibits.  We also discovered that our entry included the Mint Museum in nearby Randolph, as well, so next time we will allow enough time to visit both.