I'm sure spring will get here any day now.

It's another cool, wet morning but we're hopeful it will be nicer tomorrow. I sure hope so or I will soon need a bigger tractor to get through the grass in my back yard! I suppose that's the price to be paid for slacking off for a weekend and going away.

But nothing can dampen my positive spirits these days. For those who know me well, it's been a really tough winter for me and my nasal system. But recently I got a nasal spray from Daralen, that she wasn't going to use. I had tried this particular brand when it first came out many years ago and I had no significant change in my stuffiness so discontinued using it. Mind you, at the time, it was new, so it may have had some changes made to it over the years, and my sinus condition was much worse at that time (if you can imagine that). But this time it has worked like a charm. I can breath through both nostrils (something that was quite rare) and I'm not stuffed up at all. It wasn't something I consciously followed, it just hit me a couple of days ago, hey, I can breathe and my nose isn't running all the time. It's like a minor miracle. You can't believe the difference it has made to my life.

A sure sign of spring is the hummingbirds return. I put the feeder out before I went to Regina and they are back. I love to watch those little birds out the side window. They are truly amazing. My lilacs are almost ready to burst out and my apple trees are loaded with blossoms this year. Last spring there were only a handful of blossoms on them so I'm wondering if they only do well every second year or if there was something about last year's conditions that limited production of flowers. But there are sure a lot of them now. Unfortunately the apples are not great as nothing has been done with the trees for years and I don't know anything about them. I'm not sure if spraying them earlier in the year would help or not. But then I would prefer to use the apples unsprayed. If nothing else, they will work for apple sauce.

Last night as I was coming home from work I saw Richard at the store taking some things out of his car. I'm wondering if he has revived the Sunday morning coffee routine. I'll have to ask Brenda when I go there for Friday Feast tonight. I had a piece of salmon in my freezer I needed to use so we are doing "Salmon en papiotte" basically salmon steamed in a parchment bag with veggies. Quite tasty and very healthy. That will be served with Alton Brown's Rice Pilaf. I've tried many recipes for Pilaf and his is the one I like best. It's a little unorthodox in it's method but it seems to work. Brenda is making a rhubarb pudding for dessert - I can hardly wait!

One other thing that's a little different this year is a chipmunk. I didn't see a single one last year and this year there's one that I often see scampering across the front yard. I have to figure out how to get some nuts out to him so I can feed it. We had one on Inkerman Street in Guelph who would come right up onto the porch and take peanuts out of your hand. Unfortunately "Chippy" as the kids named him, got hit by a car. That shouldn't be a problem here.