I hear it's snowing in Boulder but it's definitely not in Orange Beach, AL. We've had 80º weather and a little foggy mornings but glorious afternoons. The pictures don't do it justice - the colors are all shades of deep blues and greens. Dophins and pelicans and warm sea breezes. And Jimmy Buffet's sister's place (Lulu's) and Sea 'n Suds and all those purple red bud trees all along the highway, chasing Spring along the way ( and losing it on the way back), and wild turkeys in So Illinois. Oh, and gorgeous, huge azaleas and dogwoods (flowers I haven't seen for decades).

Finally the business is coming back to life after a long, quiet winter. In November, we purposely chose to take a lot of time off, fairly shutting it down except for the few dribbles that came in that could be handled by the remaining crew. Then the snow started and didn't stop for months which froze that down to a trickle. I wondered if the business would come back to life at all but now I see it has.

There is nothing like having your own small business. We are lucky to be able to make a decent living and still have time to live and enjoy our lives - but you do have to create the thing over and over and over again. "Hustle" is the word.

Whoa - it was winterwinterwinter and now I'm seeing little crocuses (croci?) everywhere. The last snow just melted last week and I still have to get some of the Christmas stuff out of the yard. Suddenly all the projects that went on hold at the beginning of winter are evident everywhere and I don't have my excuses anymore. We have to finish the gutters and pruning the big elm and cut up all the branches, get the leaves into the compost heap really, jumpstart the house painting and start looking at what we are going to do with the back yard so we can easily snow shovel when another winter like this one comes.

It's really quiet in this town after a month in LA. I miss the sirens and helicopters.