C'mon Back Spring

Spring is my favorite season.  Not too hot, not too cold, life begins anew.  Unfortunately, in this area, spring came in March, we had temps in the 80s, it was nice, it came too soon.  Mother Nature fooled us again.  We finally had some rain, a little bit anyway, more expected this weekend.  We were under a fire watch, which the rain of last weekend removed.  We still in a deficit of 3-5 inches of rain need to get to "normal" levels.  It doesn't seem to affected the growth in my area.  Here's the Azalea in my backyard.

We had two winters back to back that were really bad with deep heavy snow (2009 & 2010).  It did damage to our plant and tree life.  This bush is on the list to go sadly.  You can see less than half is still alive.

The hosta in the lower left corner became breakfast or maybe dinner apparently for the deer.  The picture below shows their chomping damage.  I put out some deer repellent around all the hostas about a month ago, before the rain and the colder weather rolled back in.  I did another treatment last night.  Hopefully, the damage will recover.

I just love spring because everything comes to life in grows into full bloom, so pretty.  I couldn't resist taking a picture of this medium strip on the road I travel to work.  I love the purple!!

The Black Eyed Susans have made an appearance.  They were all over the garden a few years ago.  When I planted the tomatoes last June, I had to pull some Black Eyed Susans to make space for the (too many) tomato plants.  My hydrangea and lilies are sprouting too.  We hope to get some gardening done in May, less tomatoes.  We're going to venture out, not sure what to plant, maybe lettuce and/or carrots.  I'm open for suggestions, I'm looking for low maintenance and easy to care for.

The whirley birds/helicopters continue to fall everywhere as you can see in the picture above.  It is a season all to itself here, usually the whole month of April.


I continue to stay busy on the job, which doesn't seem so new anymore.  I've been there 60 (calendar) days (9 work weeks), time flies.  I still love it, especially the short commute and lack of pressure I've had with other jobs (higher paying too).  I've learned a lot, yet I still have so much to learn.  There are still two databases I don't have access too.  The guy who is training me is blaming the Supervisor for not following up on my access.  In my downtime, I do some online reading of manuals, policies and procedures.  I discovered I should have received a 30 days review, which I didn't.  I'm going to ask about it, not sure if I will be opening a bag of worms by asking, I might as well find out.  I need to know if they think I'm doing a good job and what they believe I can do better, rather than be surprised (good or bad) without knowing.


We had a little excitement in the office (well actually the Northern VA area).  The Discovery was flown in to be housed at the nearby Air and Space Museum (extension), the Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.  Many of us were glued to the office window looking for shuttle to cross our skyline.  I stayed by the window for twenty minutes.  All I saw was others outside looking at the sky for the shuttle to arrive as well.  I went back to my desk, I never saw the shuttle fly by.  I ended up seeing it on the evening news instead, oh well.

I continue my routine of working out on the elliptical after work daily.  I haven't lost any more weight, I haven't gained any either.  I need to step it up.  I need to add some strength training too.  I was hoping to also add some outdoor activities (like gardening and some walking) as soon as the weather stabilizes.  Rain these past couple of weekends isn't helping with planned outdoor activities.


I spend my weekends doing cleaning, laundry and sometimes grocery shopping.  I have learned since I've started working that the weekends were going by too fast when I was spending both days doing chores.  I'm trying to get the grocery shopping done one weekday after work, hitting both grocery stores.  It sure makes for a long day.  I remind myself it is worth it when I get some extra time on the weekend for me!


Hope you are enjoying some "me time".