kadmium

I know because Saturday I spent four hours raking the backyard. I didn’t do a very good job last fall and we ended up with a bunch a leaves still on the ground when the snow finally got here, which in itself is a testament to my laziness. I had until December to get the leaves up and I still didn’t. Add to that all the blowdown from the big windstorm a few weeks ago, and there was just a lot of stuff to pick up. And I still have to do the front yard.

The other way we know it’s spring is when the merlins show up and chase off the magpies. They got here on Saturday morning and everyone in the neighborhood noticed it. Later in the summer, the adult merlins will set up an impressive aerial defense perimeter to keep the magpies at bay while the fledgling merlins learn to fly. I’ve tried to get good pictures of these birds for the last three years, but they’re really fast and they tend to stay up near the tops of the really tall (30-40 feet) pines in the area.