Aaaand I Skipped A Month

Ahh, the best laid schemes....  Well, I haven't given up completely. But February was a bust for 'one new thing a month', for a variety of reasons.  This is one of them: 

My sweet doggy was badly bitten by a random off-leash dog, leading to him having two surgeries to treat his wound. The expense of the surgeries sucked up any 'fun-money' I may have had for the month, and I had to spend 3 weeks tending to his draining wound and trying to keep him from messing with it.  It was a sad and nauseating time.  But he's healed up and doing much better now, so yay!  

In the midst of the time that I was dealing with Nico's injury, my car gave out on me and has been out of commission for the last couple weeks while my handy, handy husband replaces the clutch and all the other worn things he's been finding while in there.  I am SO grateful to have a partner who can work on our old cars.  If he was unable to do these repairs, my car would not be worth paying to have someone else fix.  I am happy not to have to go car shopping with no money.  

All in all, this month has been the typical isolating, depressing, dark, frustrating experience that I have sadly come to expect from the first three months of the year.  Yuck, yuck, yuck.  But it's March now, and I'm trying to bring myself up out of it.  Things are starting to bloom in the garden:

The English daisies in the fleur-de-lawn are coming up.

Early violets are blooming by the back fence.

I don't know what these are, but I love these teeny blue flowers.

Daffodils and crocus are in bloom, the camellias are busting out in hot pink all over the front yard, and the sun has been making longer and longer stays when it visits.  The dog is healed, the car is getting fixed, spring is on its way, my birthday is coming up.  I can do this.  I will do my best to do one new thing in March and report back here.  Here's to hoping March is a month of thriving and not just surviving.

Early Sign Of Spring

This camellia bush in front of our house is one of our earliest signs that spring is on its way.  When the pink flowers start bursting out, I know that the rest of the garden will soon be bursting out, too.  Usually these buds begin appearing in February.  This year, I saw the first bud in December (!) and there are now in January a couple of blooms beginning to fade.  So. Weird. But I'm happy to see these bright pink signs of early spring reminding me that these cold, dark days are slowly getting longer and warmer.

Spiderweb In The Window

Flurries

We had some snow flurries today in Portland.  Try to remain calm.