spring will come again

I got lucky this morning. I was walking out with my camera to get a picture of the flooded creek, and I heard the raucous call of sandhill cranes. They sounded like they were coming my way, so I whipped the camera out of my pocket, turned it on, and zoomed the lens to 4x. I had no time to think as the birds came in to view, I just hit the shutter button and hoped for the best. This is a crop from a bigger photo. The branch got in the way, but I actually like it.

Today I also saw/heard my first-of-year cowbird (big deal, huh? Really, they have a unique call.) and yellow rumped warblers! The spring peepers, chorus frogs and wood frogs have resumed singing, and the woodcock and snipe are displaying at twilight. Even though today's high temperature only hovered around 40, the sun was out and took away all of the snow in sunny areas.

I've been having new house thoughts lately. By this time next week, the roof may be done! I am now choosing exterior stain colors and tile for the floor where the wood stove will be. We had settled on a dark gray-blue ceramic tile a couple of years ago, but Menard's no longer carries it. Instead, The Hermit found something even better: slate tiles. They are roughly the same color we had chosen before, with some beautiful natural variation among them; no two are the same. And cut stone is a bit more environmentally friendly than ceramic tile, which takes a lot of processing. I have done tile before, for the floor underneath our wood stove in this house, so I'm in charge of this project. No hurry with it, but then again I want that in place before we move in. Which may be around the time school is out. Which isn't that far off!