Little Things About Spring

 Hi everyone. Happy new week. I hope everyone had a nice weekend.

One of the things it's been time to do lately is to keep track of the changed in nature that signal the arrival of spring. It's something I've always been a geek about and record every year. It's nice to have a record since spring here in New Hampshire can start any time between mid-March to even in bad years late April.

When do I see the first robin? (Wednesday, March 24) 
When does the snow finish melting in the yard? (Monday March 29) 
When do my crocuses bloom? (Not yet but close) 
When does my phoebe, a type of fly catcher bird, reappear under the eaves of my husband workshop? (Sunday April 4) 
When do we hear the first spring peepers, a type of tree frog? (Not yet.) 

It's exciting after a long quiet winter. (Does this sound like my life needs more excitement? Ha-ha!)

Here's the tiny bit of snow left in my backyard last Monday (March 29) in the morning.

And by the afternoon, we were snow free! Happy dance time!

A week ago on Sunday (March 28th), my husband and I took a drive to Lake Winnepeesaukee, the big lake near us. This was the ice situation in Alton Bay that rainy morning.

And here it is just 5 days later this past Friday morning (April 2) after I went grocery shopping.

I even went for a drive further up the bay to the overlook along the road to see if the end of the bay was still iced over.

That was open too. Looks like the lake is open as far as the eye can see here. (And the state cut down some trees that were blocking the view. Nice.)

This past Saturday afternoon my husband and I took a drive around the entire lake to check out the ice situation. We've been waiting for them to call ice out.

It takes almost a couple of hours with not a lot of traffic to make the drive, and even though the south end of the lake is open, on the north end there was still some ice.

When this ship in the photo below, The Mount Washington, can leave its port, ice out is called. As of Saturday late afternoon when we stopped by, the end of the harbor where it opens up into the big lake still had ice.

It won't be long until ice out is official. Maybe even by the time you read this post.

I have been taking in the bird feeders at night for a couple of weeks now. It is a pain in the you know where, but better safe than losing them when a bear drags them off into the woods or rips them apart. My daughter's beau snapped this photo this past Friday morning looking outside their house window.

Bears wake up especially hungry so I bet this guy was out hitting some bird feeders.

This next guy is hungry too. Or in this case, hoping I get my  bird feeders put back out for the day, filled with sunflower seeds, ASAP.

My page is inspired by all these spring changes and this squirrel photo.  It's my latest for Eileen's Inspired By challenge at Art Journal Journey.

My background started with a piece of cardboard from a package that I received in the mail. I stenciled the relaxed diamonds with some white paint. Then I rubbed the green  and blue inks on the page. I had some left over bits of soft rubber from when I carved my seaweed stamp (last Friday's post) so I carved the buttonhole looking image. These were stamped on white paper, fussy cut and then randomly glued around the background. 

Mr. Squirrel is a photo from an old New Hampshire Fish and Game magazine that I was getting rid of, and I made the quote bubble.

Have a great start to your week. Hope you have lots of signs of spring around you (if you live in the northern hemisphere that is).

And as always, thanks for stopping by to visit.