Okay, I need to do a little catching up here. Let's begin.
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I took my trusty little spading fork out into the yard and garden this morning to see if the ground was still frozen. It isn't in the raised beds . . . at least not the top 6" or so. But it may well still be down deeper than that.
It is frozen in the flower beds on three sides of our deck. One of our first projects this spring is to tear off our south-facing deck and replace it with new construction, changing the configuration of it slightly.
The flower beds on the three sides of the deck are being changed. We're eliminating two of them and in the case of the front, south-facing one, making it larger. This includes taking out two, maybe three, trees. (Don't worry; it's all good.) The 6" x 6" timbers that have formed the delineation of these beds are nearing 20 years old and are in sad shape. I need to remove them and the dirt in the beds before deck deconstruction starts.
When I got my spading fork (just barely) underneath this section, the 6" x 6" splintered and broke apart.
The soil in this area closer to the house and a little more protected was thawed enough that I could loosen the end of this long piece of wooden border. But the whole task will be much easier if I just exercise a little patience (of which my husband declares I have none) and wait for more thawing of the earth.
This section of our garden, at the bottom of a southern slope and closest to the woods line on two sides, is always the last area to lose its snow cover. It may be hard to see because of the monochromatic (otherwise referred to as "blah") coloring, but the left two rows of blueberry bushes are free of snow, but the third one on the right is not. Beyond the blueberries are the three rows of raspberries still mostly freezing their tootsies in snow.
It's frequently well into May before we experience any kind of spring weather so I'm just being overly antsy this year to get outside and start on the list of projects. Patience, Mama Pea, patience.
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So, now here is the catching up part of this post. I wrote the above post yesterday, took the pictures yesterday, while planning to post it this morning. Which I obviously have.
But what happened overnight? What scene greeted us upon arising this morning that dramatically changed things? A scene straight out of Dr. Zhivago. A heavy covering of that-white-stuff-that-shall-remain-nameless clinging to every twig and branch, covering all ground surfaces and making me so mad I'm refusing to take a picture to illustrate how beautiful it is. I love snow. I really do. But not now. Now I want sunshine, bare ground, warmth and something, anything, with green coloring out there. Give it up, Old Man Winter. You're over-staying your welcome.