I sincerely hope that everyone had as beautiful a holiday as we did here in SE Idaho. Believe it or not, this was the first Easter weekend for years that we didn’t have bad weather. Either it’s been cloudy, windy, rainy or snowing, or a combination of all of the above. Not this year, though! Thankfully it was bright and sunny and just perfectly perfect weather for a change.

What a blessing, indeed!

We took advantage of the weather on Saturday and did a bit of sprucing up in the yard. The kennels got mucked out and new straw got put in, and we bought a shiny new swimming pool for the pups:

They weren’t the only ones to get a holiday swim in. The ducks enjoyed the melted snow that puddled up as well.

The girls made sure to stay close in to their nests, of course.

We have three nests filling up with eggs so far. One of the girls is nesting full time now so it won’t be long until we have a clutch hatching.

While they all played in the water, hubby cleaned up the gold fish pond out front and I raked up leaves from under the lilacs. Then we moved the antique farmer’s cart over in front of them.

The plan was to use it as an egg selling cart but I think we’ll wait on that. There’s plenty of room for flower pots of all kinds and we also fixed up the half barrel for morning glories which will (hopefully) vine up on the wire frame of the flower girl we added to the light post. It’s a bit hard to make her out now, but if all goes well, this will be a beautiful display in a few weeks.

Fingers crossed!

The little greenhouse we added last year also got some attention.

We’re adding a new brick entry so we played around a bit with the lay out of them before we fully commit. We also played around with the idea of a new little patio area next to the greenhouse.

We’re adding more raised beds in that area so it will be tucked into a corner next to them when we’re done.

We didn’t have time to clean out the coop, that will have to wait, but I did manage to replace the weather-worn “Fresh Eggs” sign that had faded so badly you couldn’t read it anymore.

The “Beware of Chickens” sign is holding up much better than expected!

I added a new one to the coop door itself.

We still have a few things left to do to get the side flower boxes ready to plant but it’s coming along nicely!

I haven’t decided what to plant in them yet but, since I am deathly allergic, I may go with marigolds or geraniums since wasps apparently don’t like either of those. I don’t want to have to dodge those little murderers and risk get stung trying to collect eggs every day!

Marigolds are self-sowing which means they’ll come back where geraniums won’t, so that means less work next year (and the next). I hate having to plan my life around my hyperactive immune system, but it is what it is and I just have to accept that I have limits.

We finished up just in time for the first annual neighborhood Easter egg hunt and parade. Bouncy houses went up in a few of the neighbor’s yards, dozens of families came out to parade up and down the streets and we really enjoyed seeing everyone’s smiling, happy, shiny faces again after a year of lockdown restrictions and (un)social distancing.

It made us a bit nostalgic for when our own kids were little but we are also thankful they’re grown now and we’re not having to deal with raising them up during a pandemic and all the craziness that is going on with that.

Anyway, I’ll need a day or two to recover and then it’s time to focus on spring cleaning inside the house. It’s time to spruce up my own coop!