April Showers Bring...

Happy birthday, Mom! Saturday birthdays are the best!

Here are some photos we snuck off her phone that illustrate why May in Michigan is such an awesome month. 

First, some shots from the yard:

the weeping cherry tree in full floral glory

creeping myrtle

wild violets

New growth on the evergreens. Baby needles are so soft!

velvety baby sassafras leaves emerge already in their 3 distinct shapes

their tiny flowers aren't nearly as impressive as the weeping cherry's, but they still have them!

And now for a few forest photos from last weekend. Here is the group - minus Mom, obviously.

They were looking for morel mushrooms, which I'm told are pretty good when fried in butter. No luck with the morels, though they did find a cluster of what her uncle referred to as "beef steak" mushrooms (also apparently tasty), so it wasn't a totally fruitless venture.

They also encountered some interesting plant life:

unknown plant that looks like a cross between a calla lily and a pitcher plant

moss growing tons of sporophytes (the brown stalky things)

pleasantly round mossy mound

moss growing in a glass bottle

little white flowers

Not an egg, don't worry.
They found this mushroom cap (not a morel) that had been picked and turned upside down.
I didn't know they looked like this inside!

A colony of mayapple plants. They remind me of little umbrellas. =)

Easter Birthday Recap

My birthday, which fell on Easter Sunday for the first time ever for me, turned out to be a great one. The weather was spectacular, so my sisters and I spent most of the day outside in the backyard. As long as I stayed out of full shade, I was quite comfortable in our new coconut t-shirt and jeans. =)

We all were foolishly hopeful two snow dumps ago that we were done for the season, but no. Last Saturday night, April 27, it snowed again. Big, clumpy, wet flakes that melted by morning, but snowflakes nevertheless. This past week was chilly, cloudy, and often rainy, but at least (dare I say it?) the meteorologists aren't predicting any more snow this spring.

Needless to say, we've been staying away from the snowy isles on HI2. 20-Karat and I travelled to Windy Pines at the end of my birthday to flute my birthday wild horse.

Before we got to that, we found this:

And then this:

I was thinking, man, too bad that he wasn't my birthday flute. I'd really have had a shot at winning the best looking and coolest avatar categories with him!

I shouldn't have worried. I headed over to the kittens and catmint to flute my wild, and the wild cooperatively appeared right where I'd hoped. =^)

Wow! I think this horse may sweep the competition in all categories this year! Super handsome, solid stats, and a pretty great persona. I like my chances. =)

Here's a less obstructed view of that great avatar:

As you've probably figured out from above, my sisters and I still want to have our birthday wild competition this year even though Mom doesn't have a 2019 page-a-day horse calendar. She does have a small 12-month horse calendar by her desk, though, so we figured we'll use that for the calendar-horse-to-try-to-match category.

Here is the April horse:

Well, the facial markings are similar. Both horses are gold, pale gold, and white too! (They just have those colors in different places.)

Also, just for fun, here is my birthday dog on Mom's page-a-day calendar. What a cutie! 

Maybe we should add a category for dog that would coordinate best with our fluted horse? Mine would both be very athletic and have white patches...

In other news, we actually happened to notice last night when sign ups were open briefly for HI3! (For anyone who somehow doesn't already know, a new 3D Horse Isle game called "HI3: Infinite Wilds" is currently being developed and will eventually be launched. Some players have been allowed to sign up to test it out at various times.) We did not try to sign up, since we have Macs, which are not currently supported, but we did claim "PepsiSummer" as our future HI3 player name. We're nervous that our Macs won't ever be able to handle HI3 even when HI3 becomes compatible with Mac. (We gave up trying to figure out how to get Star Stable to work, and it is also a 3D thing that has to be downloaded...)

Oh well, only time will tell. For now, we're still quite happy on HI2.