It would be perhaps a bit of a understatement to say that I was not ready to go back to work. Despite that, vacation is over, so back to work and back to school.

As far as house projects, the bedroom is done, and I think it looks quite nice, even if I do say so myself. Pictures to come. Michael also changed the switch and several of the outlets in that room, and then did the big electrical project in the basement–adding extra switches for the basement lights. Essentially, most of the lights in the basement can now be controlled from a group of switches at the bottom of the stairs. This is a huge improvement over things when we moved in. At that point there were few lights, and those lights were all on pull strings (you know what I mean) so now we have plenty of light, all those lights are on switches, and most of those lights have two switches, so they can be turned on and off from multiple places.

Pretty neat.

One of my other projects was to de-junk the house. Three bags of junk and a huge pile of books will all be leaving. I was thinking about listing the books I’m getting rid of to see if anyone wanted them. I already have almost $200 in credit for used books at the Bookshelf, so it’s not as if I’ll use that up any time soon to need even MORE credit for used books. Which reminds me, I also have pictures of the pile of books that were taken out of the bedroom I redid. Even I was somewhat stunned by the number of books we had just in that room.

My only other exciting project was that I planted flower seeds. I now have many containers of dirt, sitting in the basement, waiting for life to start. Not a huge variety this year: sweet pea, pansy, carnations, Chinese lantern (which I have NEVER been able to grow), catnip, purple cone flower, million bells, and several other things I can’t remember. I also wanted to plant silver dollars, but couldn’t find any seeds–I’ll keep looking.

We looked at the plants outside, and it looks like the Jasmine is dead. I’m not sure about the lavender, though I am hoping it made it through the winter. The heather, despite its brown spots, has some flowers already, so hopefully that will come back fully as well.

Crocuses are blooming, and daffodils shouldn’t be too far behind. The irises and day lilies are starting to come up, although slowly. It looks as if most everything made it through the winter, although for some of the shrubs I won’t know for certain until it gets warmer.

I didn’t even look at the roses, but I am hoping that all the plants, even the now ones, made it through the winter. Right now what I want is the weather to warm up and to stay warm, so that I can move my plants outside. The plants that were relegated to the basement (No room! No room!) are starting to look a little worse for wear, and I’ll be glad when I can get them outside and into the sun.

But mostly it’s nice to see flowers coming up, and to think about what I’m going to plant this summer, for after the death of winter comes the new life of spring.