{"id":10884,"date":"2025-03-31T18:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=10884"},"modified":"2025-03-31T18:04:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T22:04:00","slug":"the-signs-of-spring-are-all-around-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2025\/03\/31\/the-signs-of-spring-are-all-around-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The signs of spring are all around us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even though when you look at my front flower bed, heaped with dirty snow, ice, and some wood ashes and say “yuck,” if you really look closely, you’ll see little daffodils coming up. I saw the first ones this morning. Besides that, we’re getting a few migratory birds hitting our feeders. This morning, we had a few juncos, a purple finch, and I’m pretty sure I heard a red-winged blackbird. The sun is out brightly, and the air is spring-like.<\/p>\n

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Our little nuthatch is now joined by migrating birds.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Today, you can see daffodils coming up in the yucky flower bed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This morning, we loaded up our Mastiff, Sarge, for his trip to the vet for neutering. After he and Hondo got into two fights, we decided Sarge needed less aggression. Hondo weighs less than half of what Sarge does so their fight is not evenly matched, even though Hondo kind of instigates it by walking stiff legged and holding his tail stiff behind him. He’s always been the boss, but now Sarge is getting older and won’t take it. The surgery may or may not stop the fighting, but the e-collar and training will all help too.<\/p>\n

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We had freezing rain, but it melted.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve been planting tomatoes like mad, trying to do a flat a day. The first ones are up and look so tiny, compared to the thicker peppers, which now have three sets of leaves. Yep, they’re getting transplanted very soon! Today we picked up three bags of ProMix from The Watering Can so I’m all set. With nice weather, Will got the hydraulic pump fixed on the Ford tractor and we’ll be splitting lots of firewood for next year real soon. We have a whole lot of logs sitting in various locations, just waiting to be cut up and split. That’s such a good feeling!<\/p>\n

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Our peppers are ready to transplant.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our hens are doing their job very well. Two days ago, I got seven eggs from my nine (old<\/em>) hens. Not too bad, eh? I’ve ordered 25 new chicks so our friend, Sherri, could get the 10 she wanted (they’ll only ship 25 plus). We’ll also be hatching some of our eggs for both Sherri and us. I’d like to get the core flock up to about 25 birds again. That seems to work for us so we can give eggs to folks who need them and still have lots for us too. Sherri is going to brood the chicks as we would have trouble with keeping them warm. Plus, our cat, Buffy, would be a problem as she thinks everything that moves is prey. I’ll buy all the feed for both budding flocks, so it’ll be a win-win situation for both of us.<\/p>\n

Come on spring! — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though when you look at my front flower bed, heaped with dirty snow, ice, and some wood ashes and say “yuck,” if you really look closely, you’ll see little daffodils coming up. I saw the first ones this morning. Besides that, we’re getting a few migratory birds hitting our feeders. This morning, we had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10889,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884\/revisions\/10889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}