Sigh.

Ahhh.... A nice sigh of relief. Winter is finally leaving us and I couldn´t be happier. While we still had frost last weekend, the highs are now out of the 40s and solidly into the 50s and 60s - today we even got into the high 70s. I cannot even explain how good this feels - my skin can soak up sun for the first time in ages, I can walk around outside without 15 layers of clothes and my shoulders hunched up to my ears because I´m cold (my shoulders are slowly returning to normal level), I can wear shoes that aren´t boots and I can see the sun and a blue sky (winter in STL is 6 months of gray skies). All of this is very very very happy. I totally have spring fever too. At work I just sit and stare outside at how nice it looks and marvel at all the green coming back into the trees and grasses and how blue the sky is and just wish I were outside. At home I can barely keep myself inside long enough to cook dinner - I want to run, play in the veggie garden or just mess around with my little plants in the front yard. So I am super happy spring has arrived.
One sort of funny/sad/cute/yucky spring story from today though - When I got home from work today I noticed that my hanging potted plants were looking a little dry and needed some water. Since they are hung well over my head I just push up on the bottom of the pot to unhook it and then bring it down. So I did that and saw a mass of gray fuzz in my plant as I brought it down - so I did what any wimpy girl would do, I screamed and dropped it. I swear it looked like there was a rat or something in my pot and I was freaked out. Well, it wasńt a rat - it was a nest of baby (and I mean itty bitty baby) birds - in my pot! There were now five of the little things (no feathers yet, just skin and that gray fuzz stuff) on my front porch. So I freaked out and called Cody and he said to pick them up with a spatula (because if you touch them the mom may not come back for them) and put them back. So I got a spatula out and tried my best to gently scoop them up, deposit them back in their nest and hung the plant back up (stupidly without watering it first). So I really hope the mommy bird comes back or I´m going to have a dry, dying plant and five dead baby birds. And I don´t think I can deal with that.