April showers bring forth...

We have flowers in the garden already; a pink flowering redcurrant, yellow forsythia, daffodils, blue anemone blanda, the primroses are all over the lawn like little patches of lost sunshine, and as for our magnolia tree... it is simply stunning. It is so very white that at night the street light reflected off it actually lights up our dining room.

This time of year is delightful with the little birds flitting around, all busy and singing. We have at least two pairs of black-caps nesting in the hedge, and one pair of long-tailed tits, and umpteen blue-tits and great-tits, as well as robins, wrens, blackbirds, dunnocks, chaffinches, siskins, goldfinches, pigeons (of course) and the ever-present noisy pheasants. We have Mr and Mrs Pheasant, as well as two distinctive male pretenders; one very pale slender one that we call the juvenile, and one adult male with half his tail feathers missing, bless him. These make constant attempts on Mrs Pheasant's delicacy, and have to be chased off by hubby. He is very glamorous and proud, she has the grace of an agitated chicken, and always makes us laugh.

Here is Mr Pheasant. He just popped through the hedge one day last week and came face to face with Mrs Deer. They had a brief, slightly startled face-off, then each decided that the other was no threat, and he walked round her to hoover up the bird-seed under our feeder, and she went back to pruning our shrubbery. How lucky am I?

Anyway, on to today's crafty stuff. This is a card that I made from using up bits from my scraps file. Even the vase is a cut-down oval die, and the greeting is made from a label die but cut using the two opposite ends without the middle. If you see what I mean.

I'm entering it into these challenges:
Creative Card Crew: handmade flowers
Simon Says Stamp: April showers bring spring flowers
Pixie's Crafty Snippets Playground: snippets (and the BEST prize this week, I would LOVE to win this!)