Spring has sprung, the grass has rizz, I wonder where the flowers is?

[Joel Merrill]

My lilacs that I thought were too badly frozen are about to bloom anyway :basic05 I'll post pictures when they do.

Joel :fav04

[Joanne Vergin]

Great! I was afriad that I would have nothing from my Forsythia this year but there are a few blossoms.
Joel, did you ever figure out where the birds went?

[Joel Merrill]

Joel, did you ever figure out where the birds went?
All the other birds are back and things are normal at my feeder except there are still very few sparrows. My guess is that there must have been a disease that went through this area or even just my neighborhood that killed most of them. :basic04

Joel

[BobHunt]

I just put in almost 100 onion sets, a big row and a half of cucumber, 4 huge dahlia bulbs, and 4 giant cana bulbs, and a huge row of flower seeds in front of the patio. I have 150 glad bulbs, sunflower seeds, more dahlias and more veggies to plant. Oh and begonias, watermelon seeds, and much much more!

[Joel Merrill]

Great! I
Joel, did you ever figure out where the birds went?

You know, now that I think about it, we went for a year or two about ten years ago where we had very few sparrows but had a lot of house finches. I didn't think much about the sparrows then because we had so many house finches but maybe the population goes up and down naturally. Right now we have some sparrows and some house finches but not as large a number as usual. It is kind of strange because we had a mild winter. The gold finch is the Iowa state bird. I get a few of them but they like thistle seed and other small seed and all I put out is black oil sunflower seeds. I have several neighbors that have gold finch feeders. I've had a couple of mourning doves in my yard for years and they were gone this winter but they are back, well, I don't know if they are the same ones, but I have some again. We had a harder winter a few years ago and a lot of the pheasants died but the population is back up already.

It is interesting how animal populations go up and down. When I used to hunt we had a high rabbit population for a few years. Then we had a lot of fox and they cut the rabbit population way down. Then the fox got mange and a lot of them died. Now we have lots of coyotes. We don't see may rabbits out in the country anymore but we have some big ones in town. I used to see a lot of turkey buzzards along the highway. Now you hardly ever see them but we see a lot of red tail hawks. I'd rather see the hawks.

Joel

[Joel Merrill]

The only vegetables I plant anymore are tomatoes. I hate store bought tomatoes. I usually plant lots of flowers. This year I have been so busy I haven't had time to do anything with the yard. I still need to clean out my rock garden and my fern bed. I should have mowed my lawn this weekend but I didn't have time. I think I'm going to put my yard in low maintenance mode this year.

Joel