Is it Winter or Summer?

Yesterday it began warming up out here.  We reached a high of 81 on our outdoor thermometer.  It's supposed to be in the low to mid-80s for the next eight days.  This is February, the middle of winter, and I want winter back, thank you very much.

I have one in bloom in each of two separate pots.

 The bulbs came from my mom's in the year or two prior to her death, but I haven't paid much attention to them so I'm only getting a few.  I'm surprised there are still any left that the squirrels haven't devoured.

Fruitless pear blossom

 With the neighbor's ivy, which I detest, as a backdrop, the blossoms on the fruitless pear are emerging.  I mentioned in last Sunday's post that they'd be along shortly.

Fruitless pear leaves.

 The leaves are getting larger, and display nicely against the deep blue sky. 

weeds

Weeds are beginning to proliferate.  Not much else will grow well in this sandy soil.  It needs a lot of amendments, but there's no room to add good soil without removing a lot of the old soil. 

I see tomorrow is Tuesday - I don't have any "back-up" items to use for the toaster oven post, so may have to make something and post late in the day...or next week.  

Nick came home at noon on Thursday complaining of feeling ill.  He had a fever, and over the next couple days it stayed below 102.  He didn't want to be disruptive to his classes as he was still coughing and sneezing today so stayed home again, but will be going back to school tomorrow.   

Marty has also been sick.  I didn't realize he'd recently had a mild cold, which always goes into his chest and for the last several days he's been feeling pretty crummy and coughing a lot, and is tired still today.  He starts his new job tomorrow, so I hope he can pull it off.  

I've hibernated in my Creation Station this week, emerging only to fix meals, and meet with friends a couple times.  Today I went downstairs and spent the better part of the day doing chores.

I managed three loads of laundry, and half of one that had been sitting in the dryer for a week.  Everything is now either hanging on the racks in the garage (laundry area) or folded and sitting on the table waiting to be put away.  I paid some bills, cleaned the cat box, finished loading the dishwasher and ran it, tried to take a late nap but was interrupted by a call from my sister and then it was time to fix dinner (shell pasta, shrimp, Alfredo sauce and spinach - yum, I mixed mine altogether in a bowl). 

Yesterday and some today, I've worked on identifying photos that I brought back from Oregon.  One brother wants to know: "Where are the old black and whites that were in the shoe box sorted per sibling?"  I'd have to share too much drama for you to understand why that irks me.  I'm so tempted to ignore his post, and probably will for a few days.  My plan with these photos (I'm the one who sorted them) was/is to scan them - some were scanned at my dad's in Oregon when I was there - and put them on disk(s) to send to all the siblings along with "their" respective originals.   I just hadn't bothered with it to this point.  

I have too many of those things I just haven't bothered with.  Maybe I'll start getting to some of them this week.  Maybe not.