A Walk on the Slope

Today is March 4th and we woke to just the lightest sprinkling of snow on this chilly morning that is already warming up.  Kind of like we were hit by powdered sugar through the night.  Could this be the last snow we see this winter?  Fingers crossed!

It seemed like a nice morning to go down the slope to our little stream and check on the progress of the daffodils.  Of course, I took my camera.

First stop was the bird bath.  I guess the birds will be ice skating for a while this morning!

As I went down the steps toward our little stream, I saw lots of clumps of daffodils at this stage.

But the best pop of color is here:

Here is a ground level view of our stream:

Coming back up, I took this picture of snow (and sunshine) on the holly:

And while I'm there, I always like to take a picture of the house from below... you can see our nice, clear blue sky today.  The snow won't last long! (In fact if I hadn't told you, you wouldn't see any snow on the slope!)

And then the view from our deck, down the slope to the stream:

Our cactus does not appear to have liked the winter.  Not only were there some unusually cold temperatures this year, it got covered with snow during our most recent major snowfall, and then while it was under snow, the neighborhood kids trampled it when they took a shortcut under our deck to use our steps to jump over to the area beyond the stream.  It looks pretty sad, but I bet it will revive!  Cacti are tough!

 Looking down on it from the deck, I even see some green!

When I lived up north, March was probably my least favorite month.  Not only was it long, but it was the time of year when everyone wanted to head south for a respite from winter.  Often it was snowy and then rainy, and when the occasional warm, sunny day started to melt away the snow/ice banks, you could see the dirty remnants of all the seasons storms in the grimy ice piles that were slowly eroding away... and turning to muddy messes!  We often got some of our worst snowfalls in March.

Here I find March to be fascinating and one of my favorite months.  We have certainly had enough of winter and throughout March, if it hasn't happened already, we see new signs of spring every day.  Already the pussy willows are out, all the buds on the trees are swollen and colored, the grass is starting to green up, and in just another day of sunshine, we will likely have dozens of daffodils in bloom on our slope!