Bluebirds of Happiness (and other spring delights)

Happy, happy, joy, joy - we now have a nesting pair of bluebirds in our box!! We're so happy, because they came back much later than normal this year - we were afraid they'd forsaken us. It would have been especially disappointing because last year's birds were our first in about 5 years. Something got to those birds that year and killed all the fledglings. Bruce found dead babies several days running near the box, and then one day it was down to one very frightened baby bird who was perched on the bodies of dead siblings in the nest, while Mom and Dad kept trying to coax it out. We found that last one dead on the ground the next day, and no more bluebirds lived with us until last year. So we are happy and excited and shelling out money for mealworms!

The other happy occurrence today was the discovery that my little sweet violets are out in abundance. These are the low-growing violets with the intense fragrance, in shades of white, cream, dark and light purple and pink ('Rosina'). They're always precious to me for many reasons: other than 'Rosina', which I grew from seed, these all came from a dear gardening friend and mentor. Violets always shout "Spring" to me, and they always remind me of my late mother; they were her favorite flower. When I was little, our yard in Ohio was full of them, and I would go out and pick as many as my little hands would hold, take them in to my mom, and she would put them in a small crystal basket. Seeing the violets out is like having my mom drop in for a visit, and never fails to cheer me.