Dirt Therapy

Tonight was the first time this year that I dug in my garden -- got dirt under my fingernails and loving it! I was mixing compost from my winter wormbox into my garden soil, planting rows of lettuce, and general tidying up after half a year of neglect (not to mention 134 inches of snow!). It was a nice warm sunny spring evening: should I even mention that this past weekend it was in the 30's and low 40's and we had snowflakes (WRONG, it was technically "graupel", which is pseudo-snow)!

Aaaaah -- SPRING is finally here. About time, given that school's out in 2 days and we're going camping next week.
The leaves on the trees are the size of squirrel's ears -- in some parts of the US that's when you plant your corn -- here it means it finally safe to direct-seed vegetables that say on the seed package: Plant after all danger of frost is past.
My family surprised me with a greenhouse for Mother's Day!!! It's still in the box, but I'm super-excited and already dreaming of harvesting tomatoes that actually turn red.

Snipe in my backyard

At dinner tonight (during a lively geophysical discussion between the prof and the kids about the earth's magnetic field, which I admit was somewhat lost on me) I spotted a snipe in our backyard -- it seemed to have descended on our wet lawn, thinking it had found a marsh! Yes, around our house the snow is indeed mostly melted now (BTW, we did break the record with 137 inches this winter)!

Snipes do nest in the wetlands at the Nature Center, but this is a first sighting at my house -- we're a good way above the valley floor... I'm sure he'll move on soon, although he did stick around (staying perfectly still) while I was fussing about the flowerbeds -- now that the snow is gone, I was fishing out the candles that had fallen down from the deck (ice-lanterns at Winter solstice). This past winter, at one point, we could practically sled from the deck into the backyard -- that's an advantage of never having built a railing and being able to dump the snow directly off the side... Now it's time for me to dig out the planter boxes for a visual edge, and start hinting to hubby that maybe this summer we should think about building that railing after all !?! Rail sightings being rare around here (hee hee).

Yup, spring is here!

photo credit: http://www.birdforum.net

Winter Blahs

It's been a year since I last posted! Where did the time go?
Well, since this blog is just a hobby, I never feel obliged to blog if I don't feel like it -- so, yes, I got bored with it (as often happens after a year or two), and, well, LIFE got in the way. This last year was busy, crazy & full of stress factors (health and otherwise) -- perhaps someday I will blog about them, and perhaps not...
We're past the Spring Equinox, but it still looks like winter. Everybody is TIRED of SNOW. We've had near record-breaking cold and snowpack this past winter-- anybody who doubts that spring will ever get here -- patience! THE SUN IS OUR FRIEND and always wins this time of year. Just look at the clear blue sky and feel that solar power: it's bound to melt all that snow before long-- June, July?!!!

I leave you with a picture of a bunch of kids (my own plus a few borrowed ones) on a Nature Center outing several years ago: we're on the frozen Eagle River in mid to late March -- the peak in the middle is Polar Bear Peak.