Feels like Spring! Did you hear a frog???

It is achingly beautiful outside today! I worked out front and pruned three of our huge, overgrown rose bushes. Here's a pic showing one of several left to prune, and an "after" pic showing a couple that I pruned today. None of our roses have been pruned in several years. The Curmudgeon used to love doing the dead-heading details during the summer months, but he wasn't so big on doing the big winter cut back stuff. I hope I haven't killed them!

My plan is to dig out all the grass and weeds around each bush and maybe plant annuals around the roses. But then...that's been my plan for at least six years. Who knows if I'll get it done this spring.

This is my little dog, Clem (short for Clemson). He hates it when I go outside and don't let him come along. So his little nose is out of joint from being relegated to the house while I was out side this morning.

He'll forgive me soon though, because after finishing this post I'm going to go out to the back yard and engage in some chicken-watching (our three hens just fascinate me and they're almost as good as meditation when it comes to calming the heart). Clem thinks the chickens might be good play-mates, but they're not very cooperative in that department.

Knitting? This is supposed to be a knitting blog, after all. I'm about to rip out the Fair Isle socks. (I'm sure I heard a frog just now.) The heel is driving me CRAZY! And, although the sock looks plenty big, it's really hard to pull over my heel - stranded knitting isn't as stretchy as stockinette or ribbing. I'm thinking I might do-over: add a pattern repeat going around the leg, lengthen the leg and try a Priscilla Gibson-Roberts heel in garter stitch. I know that will mess up the beautiful heel pattern that Katherine Misegades charted for this sock, but...hey, sometimes you just have to give a sock another chance at life, and if that means simplifying things, well then you do what you have to do.

That's it for now. Out I go to commune with chickens :-)