Spring has come early this year. I raked the yard the third week in March and fertilized a week later. Now the spring flowers are blooming a couple of weeks earlier than usual. Here are a few of our Spring Flowers that we have in the front of our Saint Cloud home.


One of the many versions of hyacinths


A couple of daffodils


The princess of the flower garden

A cottage tulip

Rembrandt tulips

The Ice is Out!

Liz and I arrived at our Lake Home on Friday, April 2, and found that the ice no longer covered the lake. Two weeks ago the lake was covered with ice. Usually the ice doesn't leave until the middle of April.

I'm posting three pictures of the lake. Each picture is essentially of the same view, but each one has different characteristics. While I like all three pictures, my favorite is the first one.


The weather had been cool and extremely windy. The waves on the lake reminded me of the storm I had recently endured aboard a ship on the Atlantic Ocean. But on Easter Sunday, the wind was gone and the lake looked like it was a mirror.


Another view of the calm lake taken with slightly different camera settings.


And another view of the mirrored lake using HDR (high dynamic range) settings.