Vibrant spring

Spring is in full bloom around here, and it looks to be a good year for the flowers.

The hyacinths are just about faded, and the daffodils are starting to fade, but it looks like my work on the hillside the last few years is paying off. Not only were there a dozen or so blooming daffodils, but it appears we'll have a lot of irises blooming as well. Most of them have been in the ground on the hill for about three years now, so it's nice to see there will be some color there this spring. The mums and the aster I planted there last year are coming back (especially the aster), too, so there should be some late summer/fall color. Now I just need some summer-blooming flowers to put there. Maybe some native flowers that could withstand the sun and heat.

I don't know if it's just me, but the flowering trees around here seem to be much more vibrant this year, especially the redbud trees. There's lots of them around here -- they do very well in the prairie, really -- and it just seems like their blooms are so much more plentiful and vivid than in years past. In fact, we discovered there five of them behind my property. We knew of two --- right near the back gate and a small one down on the creek bank -- but there a few other small ones, too. Not sure if they were there before and just didn't really bloom, or if they're new.

Speaking of trees, while my mom was traveling around the South in late winter/early spring, she fell in love with dogwood trees. So she bought two to bring home! We planted one with pink flowers in the back yard, and the other will go at my dad's house. So hopefully next year, we'll have some pretty flowering trees, too.

F*@#$% brilliant

I don't watch a lot of "South Park" anymore -- too many dull episodes and it got to full of itself after a few years -- but the episode I caught last night, where they lost the Internet, was terrific. One of the kids' families threw everything they owned onto the family SUV because they heard there was still Internet "out Californey way." The "Grapes of Wrath" spin was brilliant.

Even better, though, was the TV newspeople, who had nothing to say because they had no Internet and the anchors resorted to fighting over a fax machine set between them for information to read on the air.