Cabin fever!!!

Cabin fever sucks. I have been obsessing about the garden the last few days because I haven't been out of the house for days except for necessities!! I just checked the last month of rainfall for Stratford and there have been only about 10 days with no rainfall at all. The rest of the days have accumulated 383.5mm of rain [that's 15.1 inches] and I am so sick of being housebound  ! I know I won't melt [my mom told me that plenty of times], but everything is waterlogged and soggy and squishy and, well, I just don't like being wet and cold. I guess it's worth the misery knowing that the water tables are full for next year.

The ducks don't seem to mind, they just peck on the window for food as usual! There are two pairs of ducks that show up on the pond, one in the morning and one later in the day, that are apparently vying for ducky rights for the inevitable broods. Hopefully, there won't be any fiascoes like last year with 3 different sets of parents and babies, and one of the female brought babies that weren't even hers!!

The finches and sparrows are only slightly put off by the wintery weather, but, being the softies we are, we put bird seed out for them on the back patio or along the fenceposts. As a matter of fact, I think they are starting to take us for granted, now that I think about it. Hmmmm.... They accumulate in the trees across the access road to the stables that is next to our property and I swear they have scouting parties that watch for movement at the door. More and more often, I barely get the door open before one beautiful yellow finch flies in and perches on the jasmine vine at the steps. I call him Einstein, since he's smart enough to be the first at the seed. Isn't he cute??!




When there are 30 finches and sparrows and wax-eyes and riflemen on the patio, they are quite pretty [even when they are soggy] and, as hubby says, they are free entertainment!!

We moved the dahlias to one central garden spot last week and have several hundred bulbs that we couldn't cram into the space we made for our favorites, so we are selling them on trademe for a bit of spending money for the kids.

And, daffodils.....*sigh* I thought we had a handle on them last year by selling a few hundred bulbs and planting a portion of them to sell next year. Boy, was I wrong! We now have a different kind of daffodil sprouting all over the garden! They are a sort of miniature that we hadn't seen before.

And have I mentioned that we still have 'dunnos' everywhere? This will be our third summer with this garden and it looks like our digging and moving have stirred up mystery stuff, so, it's a regular thing for one of us to point and say, 'what's that?' and the other to say, 'dunno, have to wait and see!' Slowly but surely, so we are making progress with names of plants we have in the garden. Lachenalia...agapanthus...daphne....sounds impressive, doesn't it!?

Oh, yes, I forgot to mention that we have one black calla lily growing in the runoff ditch. Out of curiosity, I found that they sell for about $20/bulb. I can't see paying that much for one flower, but if someone else will buy them, we might be persuaded to part with a few extra bulbs

There's another storm passing over today--should be gone by tomorrow. With lots of spring flowering coming out all over town, I hope this is the end of the winter with spring just around the corner.