Tilly and her teapot of peanuts

This is a very tame, very brave and adorable chipmunk. I look forward to lots of fun with her. She actually let me touch her back while she was packing her cheeks with peanuts inside the teapot this morning.

Speaking of morning, we were awoken with the characteristic low cry of Raspberry with a large mouse stuffed in her mouth...at the bedroom door about 2:30 in the morning. Drama ensued, mouse dropped, mouse races under a large domed trunk, we move the trunk with Raspberry sniffing and snorting, mouse dives down the open stairwell, followed by cat and humans. Mouse dives off said stairs through the railing, hits the floor running at least 5 feet below and tucks under a bookshelf in the kitchen. Frantic cat stretches a front leg under the bookcase, mouse fears being swept out, and decides to bolt anyway and of course makes it to temporary safety in a baseboard heating unit.  We give up, and go back to bed, I fall asleep just as the birds are waking up, not a great night. T gets up, and finds Raspberry surrounded by various bits of mouse fur watching the poor thing tucked where she can't get it. T rescues said victim in Tupperware and dispatches the poor ragged thing outside. Raspberry is BUMMED! 

I hope we sleep better tonight, I spent 3 hours on the John Deere lawn tractor mowing our lawn, so my back needs a good rest. I also have a new poison ivy rash from some weeding yesterday. I scrubbed with special soap when I came in, but did not remove my silver Native American bracelet that I rarely take off and the dreaded urushiol must have been
on the inner side of the bracelet. It's just a small bit, but it itches like the devil. Luckily the Ivy Dry spray works well. Unfortunately, poison ivy loves climate change and is everywhere now. While I was mowing I spied so much in places where we never had it when I was growing up here. I never ever had it as a child and I played outside and in the woods most of my childhood.

The birdlife is amazing around us, the sparrow houses on the barn are filled with nestlings and busy parents. We have a lovely American Robin's nest in a crabapple tree out front with busy parents. Robins use mud to hold theirs together, we have watched the construction of one years ago. I also provided a pan of muddy slurry one year when we had a drought and watched in tears as a grateful Robin used it for her nest construction. 

For the Record,
This day came in warm and lovely.

All hands enjoying spring