It’s hard to get serious about planning a garden when the area in which you plan to construct said garden remains covered with snow. We know spring is here because the calendars says so, but our temperatures are 10 degrees below normal for this time of year.
Yesterday looked like this, pretty much all day long.
The snow would stick to the ground briefly, and then melt. Where the snow is melting, the ground is pretty saturated with water.
The returning spring migrants are very happy to have the feeders, and we have a continual riot in our yard.
We are also seeing the Snowshoe Hares changing into their summer coats of brown. Right now the brown fur is just peeping through their white winter coats, and they look like dirty snow. They can blend right in. I tried to take a picture of one this morning, but he did his best OMG and scampered down the sidewalk as fast as his little feet could take him.
This morning we woke up to a fresh fat inch of snow, and it was pouring.
It was a veritable winter wonderland for several hours.
But in typical spring fashion, the snow stopped, the fog rolled in, the sun came up, and there is blue sky somewhere overhead.
Perhaps today our solar panels will have something to work with. Already most of the snow that fell this morning has melted and everything is very soggy. The birds are back to swarming on the ground under the feeders, and having their party, and we are hearing a Ruffed Grouse drumming nearby. That is a definite sign of spring!
Fat buds, promising fragrant purple flowers probably by next week sometime.
A neighbor gave us two plants which we transplanted on Thursday. They are Daphne, a flowering bush that blooms extremely early in the spring. These are three year old plants, about 18 inches tall, and they will grow to several feet talk and almost as wide. They get flowers before leaves, and then in the summer they have red berries on them.
The parent plant was discovered by our neighbor in the aspen grove right below our house, by the road, about 20 years ago. A passing bird dropped the original seed which grew beneath the shady trees and bushes. Since then, the plant has produced lots of offspring, and it has come up to our house again, sort of where it started.