Home Renovation.

2-6-24 SHORT HILLS: Back in NJ just in time for more home work. The painters are here to tidy up the room that had the electrical short and the fire, plus our bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and probably more before Judy lets them leave. Judy is one to never waste a disaster. If the painters [electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc] are here for problem one, they might as well look at problems 2 through X. So our lives are upside-down again for the week.  

I have stopped using the walker and am walking with a cane and a knee brace and sometimes without the cane. PT resumes this afternoon. I have done some walking outside in the driveway and on the grass.

Groundhog day, Feb. 2, was last week on an overcast, dark, rainy day. No groundhog saw its shadow that day anywhere in the Northeast. That means, according to legend, that winter is over. So far the rodent might be right. The last few days have been sunny and the afternoons have been in the forties—almost spring-like. 

I saw a pair of house finches, about a week ago, sitting together in the junipers for a long time. I saw them again yesterday in the yew tree next to the kitchen windows each doing extensive grooming. Pictures of them through the window and window-screen are terrible, but they are a pair and seem to be deciding on a nest site. Another sign of an early spring. 

House finches spending time as a pair perhaps considering a nest site.

Here they are again a few inches from the window and screen doing extensive personal grooming. Sorry about the bad photo.

Another pic through the window.

Snowdrops are always the first to show up.