My friend Amy told me that the magnolias were blooming this week and that I should go for a walk at the arboretum before it rained later in the week. So CJ and I took Luna there for a walk tonight and I took pictures of her and magnolias. I take pictures of them every year, but it just never gets old! They're so pretty!
One of the little girls at church yesterday actually thought it was Terra and asked me, "Why did you bring your kitty today?" I had to explain to her that it was Terra's "little sister".
Her eyes are a slightly different color (Terra's are more of a yellowish green), and the edges of her ears are darker. And of course, since she's younger (and an outside cat) she is a lot skinnier than Terra is right now.
But, despite being a "barn cat" she is a very friendly little cat. She still has a bit of the typical barn cat skittishness (just the slight noise of my camera turning on or focusing seemed to spook her a bit), but despite that, she is one of the few newer cats at the farm that is most likely to snuggle up next to you and let you pet her! Most of the other cats barely tolerate people to get close to them. 
It was so warm that I busted out my favorite summer dress that I got at the Lilac Festival last year. (I'd love to get some more of them this year!)
Some owls that need their heads sewn up...and a monster that needs a pucker in his lips.
My animals seemed to enjoy being on the porch too. Luna, for some reason, decided that her favorite spot was right under my rocking chair.
Terra loves the porch...since we've decided to keep her an inside cat and the porch is the closest she ever gets to being outside. She was in a few different places...on the window sills watching and "chattering" at the birds outside ...in the blue "telephone chair" that I picked up off the curb this past fall and am planning on refinishing this summer...
A fellow RNEST artist gave me a white sweater a few months ago, and it's gotten a lot of use (and I still have a lot of it left!)
Here he is at my table at UBCon. Surprisingly enough...no one bought him. Maybe if I'd given him little happy anime crescent eyes. I might make another one with those kind of eyes.
I've also been making Nubbin Bunnies. I couldn't decide which kind of mouth to embroider. I got votes for both, so I did some of each. 
CJ made the 4x4 boxes, we set them where we wanted them, I put down some anti-weed garden cloth/plastic inside the boxes, and we filled them up with garden soil. Each box took 4 large bags of garden soil to fill.
We thought three boxes is enough to start a decent vegetable/herb garden without getting in over our heads. On my list of things I want to plant are...There's probably a few more things, but that's what I have in my head so far. Next Saturday we're probably going to go shopping at a nursery for plants. My friend Amy lent me a book called "The Square Foot Garden" that's being very encouraging and helpful.
This is the bud on the lilac bush I planted a few weeks ago! It's gotten bigger!
Cedar bush (I'm not sure if it's actually a bush or a tree, but I'm calling it a bush)
(I found that pictures of plants are so much more interesting if they include the dog!)
That stick is one of the Rose of Sharon bushes. My mom has a couple of big ones on the side of the garage at her house...and when the blossoms fall off at the end of the summer, where some of the blossoms fall will plant new bushes. Mom doesn't want any more bushes there, so that's why she let me dig two out. She has a bush that blooms purple and two that bloom white...I'm not sure which kind I got. I'm hoping I got at least one white...since I already have a sizable purple one next to our driveway (my car got covered in fallen blooms at the end of last summer).
Mom also let me have a itty-bitty lilac bush that was also starting to grow on the side of her garage. It already has buds on it. I hope it survives the shock of being transplanted (as I hope for everything else I planted this weekend) I planted it way on the back edge of our land in order to compromise with my hubby and be merciful to his allergies.
Here's a view from the property corner cedar bush. My house is the yellow one on the right. if you draw a line from this bush to between the two garages, you can visualize our property line. It's only slightly less than three quarters of an acre, but it feels like a ton of land to an ex-city-dweller who is used to living in an upstairs apartment. It's not very wide, but it is long, and I think it's the length that makes it feel like we have so much. It just feels cool to actually own land and to do whatever I want with it. And so much of it in the back is just like a big. grassy, blank canvas. I never imagined I'd ever get into gardening...but I'm finding that it's so satisfying.
I've also discovered that we have wild daffodils in the back in the woods that bloomed this week. I'd like to transplant them closer to the house.
Luna says "I'm helping!"
"Dig dig dig dig dig..."
Then, yesterday, while at my parents' house for Easter dinner, my mom told me that someone down the street from their house had a cedar bush on the curb that they had dug up and were discarding. So CJ went and put it in the bed of our pickup truck and we took it home and planted it last night.
Leave it to me to get plants out of someone's trash! "Waste not, want not"... right? "One man's trash is another man's treasure!"
This is the view of our back yard. Our property goes all the way to the back. That small dark dot toward the center of the picture is the bush we planted. It marks the corner of our property. I also planted two Rose of Sharon bushes and a lilac bush, all dug up from my parents' house. The other bushes I planted are too small to be seen from this far away.
So, even though it's not "Eastery" (ie: chicks and bunnies and eggs), it definitely gives a "springy" feeling. It makes me think of beauty and color and new life.
And Easter is about new life...and not just in the general, nature sense...but new life in the sense of Christ's resurrection and in the sense of having new life through trusting and loving Him. And I know it might sound hokey to those who aren't Christians and don't understand, but you end up seeing the true beauty of it all when God reveals Himself and you learn to trust Him.
I keep learning how to trust Him more every day.
