In my “blogger frogging” adventures, I get so envious of all those who are blogging about beautiful spring weather & all the pictures of the flowers & green grass and all!

Well, I took a few of my own pictures yesterday! I snapped a couple in the back yard.

The black spot in the middle is the accumulation of the hulls from the black oil sunflower seeds that we put out for the birds. Last year we raked up 2 & 1/2 - 5 gal. buckets of them, just in the spring alone! You can imagine how much seed we go through in a year!

MPK put metal roofs on both the garage to the left & the pole barn in the background. As yoou can see, all the schrubs next to the garage are being damaged every year by the snow that slides off the roof. And I really wanted to plant roses along the side of the pole barn, but there is a whole lot more snow that comes down off that roof!

We're still holding on to the cold & snow....but not by any choice of our own.

And I really would much rather look on the bright side of things than have it bring me down! So, when I downloaded the pictures from my camera, I found a couple that I’d taken a few weeks ago that I’d forgotten about. I took them from the upstairs bedroom window of the fox tracks that went across the front yard & out on the ice that was still there at that time.

You can just barely see them. In the middle of the picture...coming in from the right. The ropes are the railings that lead down the steps to our boat dock & the frozen river.

The tracks lead from the front yard , down the hill & out on the snow-covered icy river.Two days later, there were tracks going from the side yard, to the front & also down to the river.

When I thought about all those tacks, they reminded me of the time when I was about to turn in the driveway one night & a fox darted out of the drive, across the road & into the bush. He’d been checking out the suet we'd saved from our venison that we’d processed last hunting season. We put it out for the birds every winter & get some awesome woodpeckers & the chick-a-dees love it.

A few years ago, I used to rent a small house just down the road from KFC. Quite often I’d be standing at the kitchen sink & look out & see one come out of the bush & run across the yard in broad daylight. And one winter I did manage to get one on our video camera as he was crossing the ice to go over to Squirrel Island. I see quite a few of them on my way to work. I’m not sure if it’s the same one or not, but two different times I’ve had to brake for a cat running across the street….and both times they were being chased by a fox! It was amazing! And I'll never forget the sight of them! This was just down the street from where my supervisor lives. I knew she has a small dog so I told her that she might want to keep an eye on him when she lets him out. And, yeah - it's inside the city limits!!!

Those aren't the only "fox sitings' that I've had since I moved up here & I hope it isn't close to my last!

I chose to live here in this frozen north country...I'd only been here a couple of times in my life when I was very young. But, it made a lasting impression on me. I'd tried a couple of times to talk my ex into moving up here (unsuccessfully) while I was still married...but to no avail.

But, I'm up here now & I'm absolutely LOVING every minute of it!

Next, I'll have pictures of a rare white moose in Timmins, Ont., Canada which isn't too far north of the Soo. And my own "close encounter of the moose kind".