@home : Springing to life!

You are here! Welcome to our townhome in the community of High Point in West Seattle.

The oak trees have not leafed in yet. This bench and pocket park is across from our front door. It is nice and shady here in the summer.

Today I am celebrating a great success! The first Black capped chickadees have visited my feeder. I have been worried that I would not be able to draw birds here since I am across from a wild greenbelt and there is probably plenty of food for them. I was sitting here at my computer this morning when I heard the familiar call of the chickadee - and then thought, wait a minute, that is awfully close to me if I actually heard it through a closed window (it was 37 degrees this morning). I crawled over the dog in her bed on my office couch on the 3rd floor and peered down to the deck on the 2nd floor, and there was a PAIR of chickadees. One flew off, but they lept coming back for awhile this morning. They've come back for a late lunch and I manged to snap a picture around 3 PM.

The bird at the feeder is blurry. The green glass feeder in the foreground of the sunflower feeder is for hummingbirds. Hummingbirds were the first bird to visit our new habitat. I saw my first one on my birthday in September and they continued to visit through December. I have not seen one in awhile but I brought in the feeder to clean and it was empty, so they probably have been coming all winter (Anna's hummingbirds will overwinter in the Seattle area).

Sprite enjoys being able to get outside for some fresh air. She also likes to chew on the leafy parts of plants.

Ditto for Imp(ressionist Painting). You can see all of the pots have new growth coming back.

Yum! I can't wait to have French sorrel soup (on right). I grow both kinds of sorrel used for culinary purposes, but have not used the one on the left yet. I just dug them up out of my garden and brought them with me!

The delicious red huckleberry has also survived - 4 years since salvage, and its first winter now in a pot. I can' wait to see how well it produces berries this year. We have two plants in two different pots.

This is one of my beautiful hosta pots, but when we brought it with us, all of the wonderful small grape hyacinth came with it. The hosta has not poked up its leaves yet.

Our neighbor Janna, across from us, gave me many plants when we moved here a month later than she. Her deck gets full sun exposure and these plants were dying on her deck. My deck does not get sun after 10 AM or so in the summer so the plants are very happy here. I will need to invite her over soon to tell me what is in each of these pots (there are about 8 pots total).

My Maidenhair fern finally succumbed to winter and I don't see any new shoots yet. But my favorite native flowering plants has sprouted and is headed on its way to showing its beautiful flower head.

This is Western bleeding heart.

Seems some grape hyacinths hitched a ride in this hosta pot as well.

I hope you are getting the opportunity to enjoy spring all around you, too!