Rainy/Slushy Days and Birdhouse

Birdhouse "Before" photo

"After" (porcupines) photo

The slushy rain is coming down sideways out of the north in icy sheets against the newly washed window panes. So much for getting a head start on the spring cleaning! So we're house bound right now and which is fine with me since it gives me time to catch up on my reading ( just bought a new book on Tuesday) and my quilting projects. The rest of the household is less impressed though. Hard to stay cheerful with

A) a grumpy husband who is going through golf withdrawal, and mumbling about wishing we had moved further south instead...

B) a couple of cats who keep pleading at the door to be let out, but then when the first wet blast hits them full force causing them to back up quickly into the house again, they give me a scathing look as if I am personally responsible for this ugly weather!

Yes, we DO need the moisture out here, (although it's turning the gravel road into a soupy mess,) so the rain that started late Tuesday afternoon and continued all that night and all day Wednesday was very welcome. But the snow this morning was far less welcome!

The forecast is looking pretty grim, too. It pretty much indicates that

A) we should have left the snow tires on the car for a few weeks longer and

B) we were quite optimistic with the window washing this early...

I felt sorry for the 2 bedraggled looking deer who wandered into the yard yesterday looking for some breakfast. The pan under the bird feeder was full of only water, and icy cold water at that; no sunflower seeds left to speak of. I felt like poking my head out and telling them to come back later when I had time to get dressed and put some seeds out. But they would have only been spooked and run away seedless anyway.

Plus I had visions of any seeds I might have braved the weather to put out being A) blown away and scattered by the 60 km per hour north wind which was blowing horizontally or B) being hidden under 12 inches of sloppy wet snow that was threatening to fall and accumulate before either A) the deer or B) the birds or C) the marmots or D) porcupines had a chance to eat any of it.

(Did I mention that the porcupines were eating our birdhouse?)

Here are the 'before' and 'after' photos:

Did I mention that I'm having problems with my downloaded (or is it uploaded?) photos on Blogspot all getting dumped at the top of my blog posts instead of though out the post where I would like them to appear, next to the appropriate paragraphs?)

If anybody out there in blogland knows how to make the photos behave, would you please be so kind as to leave me a message in the comment box explaining how to do that? Much appreciated!

Okay, back to:

A) reading (Kate Atkinson's "When Will There Be Good News"... a GREAT book... kind of an appropriate title right now, too, don't you think?) and

B) machine quilting the baby quilt for my niece who is due in 5 weeks, or maybe

C) baking banana muffins out of the bananas that I took out of the freezer to thaw yesterday in the hopes I would find some ambition to bake them into muffins.