Yesterday morning at 5:30 a.m. I went and let the chickens out, and then I walked around the property with the camera and took some pictures. Thankfully, I live in Montana, where a woman wandering around her yard in boots and a green velour bathrobe with a camera is not considered odd.

A robin's nest (from last year, I think). The robins are very enterprising and build their nests in all sorts of odd places. This was on a shelf under a lean-to on the garage at the other house.

This is one of our neighbors' mastiffs. Our neighbors breed mastiffs, and at any given time they have 15-20 dogs at their house. We don't see them often, but occasionally some of the dogs will come over to the property line to investigate. They have big. booming voices and they slobber a lot. They are not mean, just big.

The husband and I got the soaker hose laid out in the garden over the weekend. He was very enterprising and also put aged horse manure all over the beds while I was at church yesterday.

I have asparagus in the old garden! I was beginning to worry because only one spear had poked through, but when I looked a few days later, there were several more throughout the bed.

And finally, the first flower of the season—one of my primroses. These are always the first to bloom. The columbines are not far behind, however. (Ahem—someone clearly needs to do some weeding.)

We've had 48 hours of nonstop wind and my teeth are on edge. It started Friday night. There was a steady "breeze" of about 20 mph, with frequent gusts up into the 40 and 50 mph range. Our power was out for about 5 hours on Saturday because a tree blew down over a power line. We never used to get sustained wind events like this. We do get occasional windstorms for a couple of hours when a front come through, but this was more like living in eastern Montana where the wind blows constantly. Thankfully, it seems to have stopped now. I don't like wind (which is why we don't live in eastern Montana).

And, of course, there are those people who don't have the sense God gave a chicken, and who lighted slash piles on fire in the midst of those 40 mph winds. People! Fire departments all over the county (including ours) got called out Saturday for grass fires out of control.

DD#2's dress is almost done. I have to hem it today and sew on a last little bit of trim. I also replaced zippers and fixed tears in half a dozen other dresses. I am nowhere near as accomplished a seamstress as I am a knitter, but I do okay. I haven't knitted for almost a week, but I am off to Des Moines later this week to teach four classes for their guild. It will be a knitting-filled weekend.