It's a bird...it's a plane...it"s...THE SUN!

Spring finally "sprung" in Spokane this past weekend. For the first time in over six months, we had temps in the 60's. It seemed like everyone was out in the park - kids, joggers, dogs...we even saw some high school kids with a small bonfire and guitars down by the duck pond! I had forgotten what the sun looks like, so needless to say, I was startled by the glowing orb I noticed in the sky Saturday morning:

For those who aren't aware, we live in a wooded area, near a city park. Looking straight up from our front porch, the view is this:

Our house sat empty last Sept& Oct, so the yard never received a good fall raking, and by the time we moved in at the end of November, it was already snowing...four months (and six feet of melted snow) later...we have a yard full of leaves, twigs, and pine needles galore...so Steve and I decided that this would be the weekend that we tackle the yard! We bought a special "pine needle rake" (seen at right) at the local hardware store and went to work.

Steve did most of the raking. He raked...and raked...and raked...the needles and other debris into small piles around the yard, which I then helped him shovel into sacks. THIRTEEN sacks later...we were done! Well, almost done...we still have a few piles on the side of the house to clear out...but the frontyard and backyard look great! You can see in this photo that our neighbor raked his yard last weekend and his grass is already starting to green-up...so we are hoping ours will do a quick turnaround as well. Steve likened the raking to "combing Mother Earth's hair". I liked that analogy...

After we finished the clean-up, we headed down to the convention center to the Spokane Home & Garden Show. Conveniently, they had all sorts of demonstrations of outdoor furniture, including swings, hammocks, and the like, which we enjoyed "trying out" - as well as a woman who was demonstrating foot and back massage devices. Lovely! Most of the crowd was older retirees...but we had fun dreaming about homes with hot tubs, backyard waterfalls and outdoor stone fireplaces. We spied one caucasion couple with a Chinese daughter - about 2 yrs old - who seemed VERY irritated that her parents had dragged her to such a boring place on sunny Sunday afternoon. We watched her climb in and out of her stroller about 50 times while her parents chatted with a flooring specialist...she was a cutie!

After the H&G show, we headed over to the carwash to get my Subaru polished up. I finally got the windshield replaced this week. It's like a brand new car again. So overall, a great and productive weekend - now let's see how the coming week goes...have a great week!