A wonderful surprise!!

Actually, I have had two surprises in the matter of days! My first surprise was when I got home from work this past Thursday; while my hubby and I were walking the dog, he pulled out plane tickets from his pocket!! Yes, I am going to Texas this Memorial Day weekend. I had asked for some time off a while ago to make a looong weekend hoping to go visit family (mostly my cousin); but realized I just didn't have the money for it. Soooo, my wonderful husband worked out a plan and surprised me with a ticket - round trip of course ;)
I am looking forward to some R&R and catching up with Bob and just having a break from it all.

 Rye, NH October 2010
 Me with my cousin -Bob

My second surprise was today, when I was weeding a flower bed ......

I was looking at my clematis vine, thinking of taking off some dead branches and too my surprise, I found a nest! That's why this little chipping sparrow has been fussing at me :)

Decided to leave the dead branches.......didn't want to do anything to disturb mama birds nest.

I have discovered how hard it is to take a really good bird picture. Of course, having a really nice camera would help. Every time the bird is in close range, I don't have the camera - sigh....

Every time I have the camera.....the bird doesn't come close enough - double sigh!

Well, you will just have to take my word for it that we have two nesting boxes that are occupied in our back yard. One has a blue bird family and the other a wren family. The beautiful orioles have been visiting our feeders and we have caught a few glimpses of the hummingbirds. Oh, we also saw a painted turtle crossing our yard yesterday.....no pic, sorry

                               

                       Just a few more things from our yard...

A FABULOUS WEEKEND!

We went to Cheshire, CT this weekend for a Letterboxing event held by Teeker, 2 Irish Chicks, The Flip Flopper and Pixie and the Sprites. This was one of the most fantastic events we have gone to. Those who attended the event did some volunteer work for the Riverbound Farm Sanctuary that is managed by the Audubon Society. We met some fabulous people (letterboxers and non letterboxers). As the saying goes "many hands make light work". We love it there so much that Bubbaloo Magoo and I want to go back sometime just to help out and tour the place again. The farm house from the 1800's is very cool.......it is a learning center with exhibits.

Of course there were letterboxes on the propety and we made sure we took time to get those while we were there too!

On Sunday we stopped in Sturbrige Mass to get a series by Thumbelinda and Talldave at a beautiful State Park. We got to look down on what we believe were either Hawks or Osprey's nesting grounds.

We also saw our first Lady Slipper for this Spring!

We were hoping to get to see the fantastic moon Saturday night; but unfortunately the clouds never cleared where we were in CT.



Just top the whole entire weekend off....................today I came home from work to find that the Orioles and humming bird are back. And .......an anonymous person sent me a gift  in the mail today! This is definately a weekend to remember!