The brown and yellow fields are just starting to get a haze of green if you look at them in the right light. Along the streams and drainage ditches, the green is already solid. It is always amazing how quickly it shoots up, snow one day, photosynthesis in progress the next!
Sorry for the awful quality of the frog photo, but it was the first sighting! We also spotted the first turtle in the same pond, slowly swimming down on the muddy bottom. The nature center where we do a lot of our exploring created three new ponds last Fall. They are beside a stream and near the large lake. The ponds are shallow and allow water to flow from one into the next. Already the ponds are filled with tadpoles and perhaps the turtle we saw over-wintered there. Amazing how quickly nature can make itself at home if we provide the right conditions. Build it and they will come! The photo above shows the work of beavers. The small stream flowed directly into the lake, but in the middle of the photo, you can see the line of the beaver dam. The stream has been backing up behind it and the bridge we normally cross only had an inch of clearance yesterday!
I feel that my wanderings in the woods over the past month have been tinged with an almost feeling of guilt. I read the news and look at the photographs in the mornings and feel such a sadness for the people of Ukraine. That less than a month ago they were living their lives just like I was - waking up in a warm house, tending to their children's needs, getting ready for school and work, caring for pets. Now, I am waking up under blue skies, the Earth waking up and showing signs of rebirth, new life, while they are hiding in concrete bunkers fearing for their lives or struggling in a foreign country and not knowing if they will ever return home. So, I tell myself while I cannot do anything to directly make their lives better, I can be thankful for mine. So, we head out to enjoy the world around us.
Also in order to feel that I am doing something to help, my daughter and I came up with the idea to hold a raffle drawing. Her embroidery skills have been improving, so she decided to embroider a small hoop with a big message. For $5, you get one "ticket in the hat". We are accepting donations until Saturday morning, 3/19. We will be sending them through Google.org's matching campaign for Ukraine relief efforts, so your $5 magically becomes $10. Donations can be sent via PayPal: [email protected] Photos can be seen on my Life With the Crew FB page (scroll to bottom of page for link). For some reason, I could not upload photos from my phone today.