The sweet days of Spring!

So spring is finally here in Iowa. The days are getting longer, we are having more warm days and surprisingly there are flowers starting to sprout. Most years this comes as no real shock but after the long winter that has been, you really start to question if it will ever come. This year as gone down in the record books as one of the worst winters Iowa has ever seen and its number 5 of the snowiest. That is something that we didn't have to make the books for but we can say that we have survived our first winter in our new house and it was not an easy one to survive!

So with the coming of spring there really is so much to do. Today the kids and I spent a portion of the afternoon outside playing and cleaning up the yard. So much trash blew into the yard with the snows that we worked on cleaning up. We surveyed the damages by the rabbits. We are hoping that we did not loose too many trees but it will really be touch and go this year. They had such a hard winter and ate so much bark from the young apple trees. So we shall see what the warmer weather brings with them. The roses are greening up and now I need to read up on how I am supposed to prune them back. The strawberries are coming back and it makes me long for the day that we can start picking and eating them. Oh so sweet and yummy.

But there is still a great deal of work to be done. We need to clean off all the flowers so that new growth can form and start cleaning out the stalls in the barn. So much of that will have to wait a bit longer until we can let the cows back out onto the pasture without fear of killing the grass that is trying to grow.
The chickens ventured out of the hen house and into the grass today. What a beautiful site to see them playing on the grass and enjoying some fresh air.

And with that the end of a beautiful spring day has arrived. We did some cleaning in the house and now the kitchen will be cleaned up and some relaxing will be done. Until the next day that we can get outside and enjoy ourselves....goodnight.