April flowers and Ground hogs

I have so many things to report on!  Things have been busy here in Walmart Country for us.  First, a simple post.  A few weeks ago, I was walking home from work, as I do just about every day, and I noticed some flowers planted along the brick wall that opens onto the large lawn (as close as we get to a "quad" here--but it's not surrounded by buildings, so it can't in good faith be called a quad).  A week after that, they bloomed, and it was a lovely sight:

It's for reasons like this that I especially like Walmart Country in the spring.  Little touches to make the town stand out.

Of course, two weeks later, the flowers are now dead, perhaps because it's been cold at night, or because they haven't been properly tended to....no idea. The weather here has yo-yoed from low 30s to high 70s and everywhere in between.

It's like the groundhog didn't know if it saw it's shadow or not. 

Speaking of....we saw a groundhog in our backyard recently!  Doug came upstairs to say "Hey there's a big rodent thing in our backyard" and it had scampered under the fence but a few minutes later it popped back into view.  A real groundhog, in our backyard! 

As I am not trained in the ways of groundhog shadows, I could not tell if it had a message for us or not.