Spring has finally sprung!!

 

Early April and I haven't posted a new blog update since late January...my excuse:  spring fever, or the lack thereof!  This spring is still haunted by a global pandemic, which is (hopefully) lightening up for Bragg Family South with vaccinations starting to happen.  We are doing our part to embrace what we can as the world around us starts to emerge from emergency shutdowns and other pandemic measures.  We went to the Little Rock Zoo for the first time in a long time back in February...the crowds were thin, probably more due to the cool weather than anything.

The weather has been typically weird (again) this year in Arkansas.  We started out 2021 on the warmish and relatively dry side, enough to start bringing the daffodils out in early February (fairly typical for us)...and then winter returned to south Arkansas with a vengeance!  First, we got hit by an ice storm:

Mercifully (for us, at least) this was just enough ice to make things kind of pretty, as you can see on the pine branch above--much more ice than this, those branches start to break, and trees start to bend, and snap, and take out power lines...  We also had sufficiently amounts of good, dry oak firewood, which our cats truly enjoyed:

But this ice storm proved only the tip of the proverbial iceberg!  Within a week or so, we got walloped by not one but two significant snow events that came within a few days of each other, and gave the Monticello area a total of about 10-12 inches of pretty good snow:

The Yankees in us embraced the wintery weather, but it took days for the roads to clear (they don't have the snow removal equipment in this part of the world), and many of the birds that had started their migrations north and were in the Monticello area suffered horribly in the snow that covered their feeding grounds and cold (sub-freezing) temperatures.  We took to setting out multiple bird feeders, as did many of our neighbors, so hopefully the bird losses weren't too bad.

My snowy spring got unexpectedly extended this year when my father had a surgical procedure in late February that required some additional support.   Given that I'm still in telework status with my agency (due to covid mitigation efforts), I was able to drive to Wisconsin and spent about a week and a half helping my folks out as my dad regained his strength.  This meant I got to glimpse some of how they've been living during the pandemic, including mom's regular deer/bird feedings:

My mom also spends lots of time working on puzzles:

I helped out the best I could, including using my dad's small tractor to clear some of the snow that fell while I was visiting:

(Ain't gonna lie; this snow removal was kinda fun!!).  I also helped with meals and shopping, and did some of my official work at times, too.  Certainly, this wasn't all work...in addition to plenty of good visiting time, I had a chance to get out into our woods:

This included a few snowshoeing hikes with my brother Bob, who visited a couple times:

And it was really nice to be around for both of my parents' birthdays (the cake was from a local bakery):

Being up in northern Wisconsin also allowed me to visit Kenny at Michigan Tech and to take him down to Rick Pruden's house at the end of my visit...The picture below is of Kenny and I preparing to dig into a chunk of smoked salmon from a local store in the UP of Michigan:

Kenny was going on his spring break in early March just as my visit was wrapping up, and with my dad still recovering from his surgery and unable to get him, we arranged for him to spend that week with Rick.  I was really nice to spend a long day driving Kenny from Houghton to Whitmore Lake--he has learned so much and grown so much in his months at college--and the visit continue (briefly) with Rick before I needed to get back to Monticello.  Once I returned home, I jumped right into my next task--building a wooden bed frame for Stephen:

Stephen has grown so much as well that we recently bought him a longer twin size mattress for his bed, which meant his current bedframe was inadequate.  Rather than shelling out too much money for a flimsy store-bought frame, I used my new miter saw and some dimensional lumber to build this solid frame.  It was a lot of fun to make, and very satisfying as well!

Our travels continued; Beth and Stephen went on their spring break in later March, and we took advantage of this opportunity to pay a visit to Rick Pruden:

I had seen Rick only a couple weeks before (with Kenny), but Hope, Beth, and Stephen remained in Monticello on that trip...this visit was without Kenny (who had gone back to Michigan Tech to continue his classes).  As you can see from the picture above, the weather was generally really nice during our visit, which allowed for another zoo trip...this one to the very nice Detroit Zoo:

Our visit with Rick in lower Michigan flew by, and we got back to Monticello on the Saturday before our kids returned to school...and just in time to catch a line of severe thunderstorms as we traveled through eastern Arkansas!  There were several tornadoes spawned by these storms, so the picture of us below with our cats hiding out in the bathroom was for a for-real tornado warning:

The tornado hit the north side of town a couple miles from where we leave, and did only relatively limited damage--but a clear reminder of the dangers of severe weather in the South during the spring!!

Hope y'all are doing well, and please get vaccinated for covid-19 as soon as you can!