At dusk today, I heard the first of this yearÂs full-length robins' spring songs  joyous and exuberant. So far we had only gotten short snippets of songs, as though the birds took several days to properly tune up. A song sparrow also trilled.

A house finch has been singing since last weekend, and a pair of BewickÂs wrens are moving into the bird house by the front door (where wrens raised a brood last summer).

I watched several pine siskins eating the nectar hearts out of the blossoms on the big purple plum outside the bedroom window. They and the house finches also do that to fruit trees blooming later in the season, but they're welcome to the blossoms (and later to the fruits), because I always have enough to share.

Today was another incredible spring day: the temperature was in the low sixties, the robins, house finches, and song sparrows were singing, and garden was golden with daffodils, blue with crocuses and hyacinths, and pink with camellias and purple plums. The flowering cherry buds are beginning to show color, and promising billowing clouds of blossoms. The Bewick's wrens are building a nest above the front door, an I suspect the song sparrows are building in the big brush pile, because they get agitated every time I get too close to one corner.

I hope Mother Nature will spare us late frosts or March snow.

We finally got some much-needed rain last night. The birds are nesting, and all's well.

It sounds fabulous. We're all coming over for a visit. Here in the Northeast, we had blizzard conditions and temperatures in the teens last night. Very unseasonable. The only hope is my witch hazel, in full bloom since Feb. 7--practically a miracle in these parts.

I bet it looks beautiful in the snow -- and smells delightful.