Spring has Sprung for the Casual Pagan

So, it is March 26th, 2016, and Spring has made herself known. The Lord and Lady have been very busy bringing forth life around our yard. This is both good and bad! Let's get the bad part out of the way first: I have a lawn that needs mowing. I went today and got the parts to get the mowing season started (new blade, spark plug, and air filter), installed them, then went and put too much oil in there. It ran, but belched smoke and leaked oil out from around the filter! I have drained it again, and now need to buy more tomorrow.

And now for all the good parts of Spring.

• We put up two bluebird boxes, and one has a nest with eggs! The other one is facing the first, and apparently they don't like facing each other, so it has remained empty. I'll move it around the post tomorrow, see if it is not too late for another nesting pair to make their home. 
• The blueberry bush has sprouted tons of new growth! I finally read up on them, and it turns out to get them healthy one should take off the flowers the first few years so that they concentrate on growing new leaves and stems. 
• Finches and sparrows are making short work of the birdseed we have been putting in the feeders. I have no idea where they are nesting, but I can hope we are feeding the next generation of pretty little songbirds!
• We got our first hive of bees! We installed them last Sunday, and have to wait until Wednesday to check them. But when we opened up the telescoping lid (the metal-covered lid most of you see on top of beehives) we could see them crawling up to the top feeder we were checking, and down through the gap I could see that they were busy making new comb. We have watched the foragers coming and going, bringing back pollen, and new foragers doing their orientation flights at the front of the hive. At three weeks after hatching the bees go from hive-workers to foragers, so we are hoping that the queen has laid enough new eggs to make up for the loss of in-hive bees. We can't wait to open it up Wednesday and see if she has started laying on the three empty frames we installed with them!
• Bee-friendly plants have been planted by my loving wife in the pots and planters on the deck, and seed-bombs have been placed in one flower bed by the pool area. I still need to dig out/create new flower beds around the other side of the pool so we can sow other seeds and seed bombs we have gathered for the bees.
• Pepper and tomato plants have been purchased. They now need to be planted in the raised beds in the back. Just have to chop up all the Winter weeds in those beds, then mix in the bags of compost we bought. Tomatoes will go in the bed I have prepared with the crushed eggshells we have been saving all Autumn and Winter.
• We have pulled one of the wild grape vines out of the trees along the edge of our yard in the back. These did not put out any grapes last year, unlike the ones along the edge of the front yard, so we thought they would be perfect to practice on. One of the many tasks for tomorrow will be to dig in two posts and get some wires going between them, then tie this vine to them and start training it along the wires. We still can not decide if we want to run them along the edge of the woods or make an arbor of some sort, but all of it is just theory until we start to practice.
• The peach tree is full of blossoms, but they look a bit sickly, like the edges of the petals got frozen, which makes sense since they were starting to open when they got caught by that last freeze! I think they will be all right, so I think we will have peaches this year, but only time will tell.
• Covering the little fig tree in a burlap sack seems to have worked to keep the buds from freezing off of it. All three years we have had it out front, the limbs above ground all died due to freezing, but it always came back from the roots to grow taller than it had the year before. This Winter we covered it, and now almost all of last year's wood has green buds! I wonder how much bigger it will get this year?

How is the Earth's rebirth affecting you? Positives or negatives, don't hesitate to share with us!