There’s a tiger swallowtail butterfly hanging out on my birdfeeder. While butterflies are rather more complex than I expected–I had no idea that the rather battered mourning cloak who does a patrol around the yard every morning was a male defending his territory, much as a bird would–I don’t think they’ve yet gotten to the point where they eat black oil sunflower seeds. He’s probably looking for salt or something.

My birdbath, gotta say, is a bust so far. I think it’s because there’s so much water available EVERYWHERE–there’s literally a moat around the house, where everything drains into channels in the trees–so the birds don’t need it at all. Possibly during the summer. I’ll see if I can’t get a heater for the winter, too.

This weekend was absurdly glorious here, the sort of spring day that feels almost like summer. Went to the Ren Faire with Carlota, and Kevin and his kids. Kevin got a new sporran. I bought a spectacular corset. (I think I have a corset problem. Now I just need more places to wear the things.) Did yard work Sunday. Kevin accidentally took out one of my Indian currents with the weed whacker. I need to get something to replace it…preferably something large and unmistakeable…

Today’s weather, however, is being schizophrenic–we’ve got fronts moving through at high speed, throwing up tornado warnings across the state and giving us alternating bands of rain and sun, punctuated by door-slamming winds. The temperature is supposed to plunge almost to freezing tonight, which is insane, since yesterday was creeping towards eighty.

Still, I can’t complain much. Spring is advancing gloriously. I can see the dogwoods blooming from my window. My witch hazel is flowering madly, the verbena even put out a flower, the bareroot red chokecherry I planted is going gangbusters and putting up flower buds. Everything I planted is growing furiously, particularly the wild indigo and last fall’s anise hyssop. Something is flowering out in the woods behind the house that may be blackhaw–gotta load up with bug spray and tromp out and make an ID for sure.

We’re almost out of juncos on the bird feeder. I finally got the yankee flipper recharged–we’ll see if we get more birds now that the squirrels aren’t dismembering the perch. The numbers have fallen off a bit across the board–presmably some winter migrants have left town, and they may miss the dead weeping cherry, which was sort of the staging ground for the feeder.

And now, enough staring out the window…time to get to work…