The first day of Spring...

...began here at 1:48 this morning, according to the radio weather forecaster. Could have fooled me. There's no settled snow where we are, I suppose (though there was a brief flurry this afternoon). But it's cold, there are no new leaves anywhere and not a spring bulb to be seen (unless you count the forced ones on sale at the supermarket). In fact the only bona fide sign of spring is the line of luminous inflatable Easter bunnies in someone's yard around the corner.

And yet the natural world still has much to offer, especially in the form of birds. We have a bird feeder outside the front room window and we've been enjoying watching all sorts of visitors to it, mostly unfamiliar to us: tufted titmice, chickadees, junkos, beautiful blue jays (they actually are blue) and ridiculously exotic-looking cardinals. How can a bird be so red? I could sit and watch them all day.

We were invited to school today for 'student-led conferences', during which the Girl and Boy showed us work they have been doing. One of the Girl's recent science projects has been to make a house out of boxes and wire it for lights. We saw some good examples of these, but I regret our daughter's looks like an earthquake has hit it. Apparently she and her working partner have been a bit side-tracked by the interior decor side of things, and have let the actual build slip behind schedule (oops, I'm sounding like Kevin again).

I gather (from my spies) that there's an event for the first year juniors in Linton when the children get to present projects painstakingly created by their parents... Confirm or deny, please!