Springtime!

Well, spring is officially here, with all the rain and sloppy driveway mess it brings. It's been in the 50's pretty consistently for the past couple of weeks, and it looks like that will probably continue until May or so. Par for the course, really. Even though we've been too busy to work on our house and yard, things are still happening without our input, such as lovely flowers growing. Plenty of flowers on our property were planted long before we bought the house, such as this narcissus.

Others started out as really nice gifts given to me by my husband, which we later planted, such as these mini-daffodils.

The crowning glory in my mind, though, are these violets. NOTHING, in my opinion, is quite like these violets.

Technically they're not really part of the yard yet, but they will be someday. These violets actually bloom in my parents' yard in Montana, and I always adored the incredible scent of the sunlight hitting the violets in bloom. It was a powerful, magical scent, and I really missed it when I moved away from home. I'd talk about the violets sometimes, but I never really felt like people understood what I was talking about. My mother had tried to grow the violets in pots, but they never survived. Still, since I finally had a yard, I decided to give it another shot. So, last July, my spouse and I dug a few up from my parents' yard in Montana, put them in a plastic planter box, and brought them back to Washington with us. They've been sitting at the edge of the carport ever since, enduring rain, snow, and whatever else the weather wanted to throw at them. And, finally, miraculously, they've bloomed! I went to check on them, just in case, and as I leaned over I was hit with that scent, which instantly transported me to my childhood. I was so incredibly happy, since I hadn't smelled that scent in ten years, and I got to share it with my husband. So, even though we've been busy moving friends and helping out with martial arts seminars and therefore don't have windows or doors in, at least we have violets.