Steven Helmer Publications

  I didn't spot a whole lot on my lunchtime walk today and the animals I did see (including a sandhill crane) were just too far away or didn't sit still long enough for me to get a good photo. I did, however, see some of the trees beginning to bloom and snapped some photos of that, giving me reason to hope we'll start seeing spring-like weather more consistently than has been the case.

Everyone is picking on the poor groundhogs (Jimmy and Phil) because they predicted an early spring and the weather couldn't be more winter-like. Well, I'm going to ask everyone to stop calling them liars. After all, when groundhogs predict an early spring, they don't give an exact date. The official first day of spring isn't until March 20. It's only February still. As long as we get spring-like weather by March 19 at 11:59 p.m., the prediction was accurate. And, honestly, I'll still take their prediction over any meteorologist pretty much any day of the week.

I decided to fire up the grill last night and, while I was cleaning it, I noticed I had a couple flowers blooming by the side of my house. I was glad to see this because, after that late snow we had last week, I was afraid all the flowers were killed out. Hopefully, we'll see some more in the near future.