The kids were out of school for an in-service day today. My mom came over to help T and I have a happy birthday. Low key as birthdays always are around here, we just went over to Wendys and had a nice day strolling around the house, poking at things budding out, talking about what we'd done with the place and what we had planned.
This evening, T found a very cute little northern brown snake under some stuff in the yard, probably only 9 inches long and thinner than a pencil, so certainly a newborn. So we all came out and passed it around, trying to be gentle and not scaring it much (though L did get skunked a bit by it). Since the junk it was hiding under is heading to the dump tomorrow, we moved it over to under a bush. It'll probably want to find another home as they generally like pretty damp places since they like to eat nice juicy worms and such, but I'm sure it'll find some suitable spot in the yard.
I saw quite a few field mice in the yard when mowing last weekend as well, so it seems that the critters are finding good places to live in the area.
I got some garden work done including moving one more volunteer tree (this one a box elder) from the butterfly garden plot to the easement. Yeah, it's a "trash tree" but in the easement I don't really care, and it's a fast-growing tree. Unfortunately I did some heavy damage to the columbine while digging it out. That stuff is very easy to miss among the weeds I haven't been cleaning out.
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