* * Springtime scenes *

Yesterday we couldn't use our computer until about 9 p.m. I don't know about Ralph, but I was definitely suffering some withdrawal.
Our son, Kid Two, cleaned the hard drive and Windows XP and other stuff I don't understand, and the job took much longer than he had thought it would, almost 12 hours. That's why I didn't post until way past my bedtime...almost midnight!
* * *
Today I'm sharing some pictures I snapped Thursday in the backyard of my mother's temporary house. Looks like whoever lived there certainly enjoyed gardening.


This backyard is also where the infamous (to me, anyway) silver pheasant was hanging out for a couple of weeks last month. I wrote about him on March 22.
In a strange twist another "exotic" pheasant, also native to southeast Asia, was found five miles from this yard.
At first people thought it was the same bird.

When I got the message about the bird (Pheasant Two, I guess you could say) I called my mother to tell her not to worry any more about "B.T." (short for Big Tail). He was at the nature center! Being cared for!!

Wrong. Different bird altogether.
This one turned out to be a Lady Amherst pheasant, not nearly as large as B.T. But a local resident's discovery of this pheasant, who has an injured leg and was just sitting in the man's garden, did make for an interesting follow-up story for me to write for the newspaper.
Where are all these exotic birds coming from? Don't their owners/breeders keep them in their pens?
Inquiring minds want to know.