New Flower - What is it?

A flower popped up in our front yard and it is a not of an odd looking one. I was going to look it up in Lois Hole's book but I thought I'd sees if anyone else knew what it was. If you look closely there is a hairy protuberance sticking right out of the middle. At first I thought it was a bee just hanging out because it hasn't been that particularly warm, but no, some weird sticky-outy thingy...

No pictures but one of our rhododendrons are flowering too.

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Gardening...

With spring break upon us and it getting late in the year to do some fruit tree pruning, I ventured to cut some branches.
After some reading and learning a bit when I went to an ashram some time ago, I climbed into the trees and got to it. The apple tree wasn't too bad, you can see the significantly smaller pile of branches on the grounds beside it as compared to the plum tree.

The plum tree was in need of dire thinning. The plum tree looked like a tree from one of those spooky forests that are always in cartoons and movies - branches snarled every which way, crowding each other, dense enough that a fly could not clearly manage it's way through the fettered maze. Luckily I only found a couple of places that had a common black fungus for plum trees and the rest was trying to stop all the branches from fighting with each other and competing for the same resources.

Good times! There are flowers budding on the apple tree - it was hard to cut those branches with the flowers, getting rid of future apples, but I guess the other apples are just going to be that much tastier and juicier!

I included a picture of our daffodils which are way behind some other places that are south facing. The fruit trees in Vancouver and Seattle are already blooming, what's up with White Rock!?

Oh, happy snow Thunder Bay!

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Spring is coming...

The early spring flowers are starting to make an appearance. These crocuses/daffodils popped up in our front yard a week ago. This is something that we don't see much of in Lethbridge...or maybe I just didn't notice it that much.

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The Dead of Afternoon

Not being able to handle the stress of the impending overtime of the Canada vs. U.S.A hockey game (and thinking that it was over for Canada) Jenn and I decided to leave our house and go to an open house.  As expected, the streets were eerily silent as we walked.  After hearing a brief squeal I began to wonder that if Canada scored, would we would be able to hear it?  After a second or two Jenn mentioned that she thought she heard a cheer and expressed the same sentiments.  It wasn't but a few steps later that we heard a muted eruption and our musings were verified.  We heard cheering and car horns honking during the whole half block that we walked to the open house.  It was quite something - I'm not sure whether anyone in Canada would NOT know that we had won the gold medal hockey game.

Walking home from the open house, Jenn and I both, at first, wondered who scored the overtime goal.  We both picked Sydney Crosby but then dismissed it because it would have been too corny, too poetic.  Then we started picking other players (Jenn: Eric Staal, but only because he is from Thunder Bay) because the initial option would have been just too appropriate...

I have to say that I've been impressed with Vancouver - it wasn't looking like there was going to be a lot enthusiasm for the games with all of the negative press and a muted mood that suffused through the lower mainland.  Once things started though, things were quite euphoric.

It's hard not to be a naysayer though.  Millions, if not billions of dollars were spent on an event that did not improve the overall well-being of all the people in our society.  Albeit, the Olympics were remarkably galvanizing - it was near impossible to not get swept up in the euphoria.  But, there is always the homelessness issue, not to mention that Jenn and I's jobs will be in great jeopardy because of funding shortfalls.  So, hard to approve of something that does not affect truly important and essential things in our lives, you know?  The depression that would have fell over the country if the men's hockey team had lost would seem so absurd - why waste all that energy over something that will not really affect our well-beings?  We should be more depressed over a lot of the things that Harper and our government are doing to our country...

Aside from that, it is a great day out here.  The magnolias are flowering alongside the cherry trees and pockets of rhododendrons.  The air was on the warm side of 12 degrees and you could tell that it has turned to an official beginning of spring (at least here on the west coast and the Okanagan valley).

Now if Jenn and I just shed our colds...