Surprises in the Orchard

I suppose the biggest surprise here might be the weather. Yesterday it snowed a few inches in the morning and flurried throughout the day. Today it was back up to nearly 60 in the sun, and, with having changed the clocks last night, it feels more like early May than early March.

So while we were out and about in the yard today, there were two surprises in the orchard: one nice, one not so nice. We'll start with the order in which we came across them.

First, check out the grass near the peach tree:


The bits of white are snowdrops that have naturalized themselves in the lawn. These are new — we did not plant them, nor did we notice them the first two springs that we've lived here. A closer look:


There are more scattered near some other fruit trees. They are pretty, and a nice surprise/mystery out in the orchard.

On the other hand, here is our less than excellent surprise:


I probably wouldn't have even noticed this, but Kirk did. He's pretty sure it's a field mouse burrow. It makes a trail that leads roughly from one of our apple trees to the brick path. If it kept going, it looks like it would head to the perennial border. Do mice eat flowers? Bulbs? We might need an outdoor cat or two to patrol the garden for marauding rodents.

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