Don't let the tree hit you on your way out the door

An addendum to yesterday's glorious weather: severe thunderstorms. I love spring, I just don't love temperature inversions. One of the large trees in our side yard lost a significant portion of its upper half during a gusty period. Fortunately, the house and Mike's truck weren't damaged. Neither of us were home when it came down, but the noise must have been of the 'big-scary-bang' variety because the cat and the dog were still hiding when we got home after our classes. The cat later spent a considerable amount of time telling us that she was in no way responsible for making the tree fall. I suppose I believe her; she sounded far more sincere than that time she tried to convince us that she wasn't on the counter eating leftover Mac 'N Cheese (though we had caught her in the act).

Hyacinth

We traveled this weekend up to the arctic hinterlands of the Northwest Chicago Suburbs for my dad's 60th birthday party. Happy Birthday Pops! After two 9-hour driving days back to back(which should have been 7 hour drives, without the heavy rain and sloooooow roads), it was good to get home last night. I walked the dog and collapsed in bed to watch a few minutes of 'Sense and Sensibility' on DVD so I didn't have to DREAM about driving after having driven so much. Woke this morning to 70 degrees and an overnight transformation of the trees and lawn and every flowering plant into wild growth. The cardinals are up in the trees and on the rooftops, flirting madly with each other. Every early bulb is up and blooming. The air has that ineffable perfume, the one you remember from being a kid when you first found a flower in the garden after a rainshower, rich and heavy and promising. It smells like spring.