Sprout

For the first time ever, I will have snowdrops blooming in my yard this year:

 They should have bloomed for the first time last year, but they didn't come up at all. I had been meaning to plant them for years and years, because snowdrops are the first flowers that will bloom in the spring, even before crocuses, and so they arrive just when you are absolutely desperate to see something alive in your yard, and absolutely longing for spring. But this year, because it's been so warm lately, it feels like spring is already here, so I wasn't pining for these to come up. Still, I was pretty happy to see this little shoot poking out of the ground.

The real reason I posted that picture of the snowdrop shoot is because even though I did a bug walk today, I have only one picture of an arthropod today, and it's not an insect, it's an arachnid, and I wanted to be able to provide a buffer for the arachnophobes, so they wouldn't click on the blog and end up with a spider right in their faces. So... Arachnid Appreciation:
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This tiny spider was on the window when I looked out this morning. I had to go downstairs to get my camera, and really hoped it would still be there when I got back. Not only was it still in the exact same spot by the time I got upstairs again with the camera, it was still there hours later. This picture might be a bit deceptive; this was a rather small spider.