Hummer Watch 2012

I'm outside on my patio having coffee and watching the sun come up and watching for my hummers as usual.  I had already seen some by Mother's Day last year.  We've had at least 1 feeder up since about the middle of March this year-we were hoping they'd show early since it was so warm.  It's looking like the usual Memorial Day sighting this year.

The little buggers are turning out to be perfect winter weather forecasters.  Last year I was still seeing them in October, for the first time ever and we had no real Winter to speak of.  The year before they all took off suddenly around Labor Day and winter set in on Thanksgiving.  For those of you who don't know, here in Lexington we usually only have about 6 weeks of brutal winter weather from mid-January to the beginning of March.  It's a really bad sign if the kids have snow days before winter and I have had a pinata in the backyard for my daughter's Birthday party in mid-December.  It's not unusual for us to be able to sit outside on the patio on New Year's Eve and we are MUCH more likely to have rain for Christmas than snow.

This year my daughter had 1 early dismissal from school at the beginning of March because of tornadoes on the first Friday in March, then on Monday they had a snow day because we got 4 inches of snow.

I'm so glad Summer is here.  All we have left to do is put in the vegetable garden.  I love the simple Summer pasta dinners when we walk out to the garden and pick everything we need except for the spaghetti.  Tomatoes, squash, zucchini, eggplant, oregano, basil, rosemary, parsley.  If I ever leave Kentucky it will be to move further South for longer growing seasons-probably back to my birth state of South Carolina.  Just not Columbia-too hot.