The Seedlings Are Popping Out All Oh-Oh-ver!

The first broccoli seeds I planted on the 4th of the month started popping up two days later.  Then the cauliflower joined in.  This morning I saw the first little sprout of a cherry tomato seed (also planted on the 4th) pushing through the soilless mix.  No peppers yet, but I'm hoping they start soon.

A veritable forest sprouting forth.  Moreless.

Puny in size yet, granted, but where there's life, 

there's hope for greater things to come.

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Lots of sun  was shining down upon on us Sunday afternoon when Papa Pea and I decided to go on a hike to get some exercise and fresh air.  There's a nice creek that runs on the far west side of the property that abuts ours on one side.  It comes out of the woods and runs into a big culvert under the road in front of our property.  We knew the creek was still frozen so thought it would be easy to hike up it a ways.

Yep, the creek was certainly frozen solid, but we mistakenly thought there would be a good snow covering on it which would make it easy to walk on.  Wrong.

The whole creek was one totally shiny, slick, smooth ribbon of ice.  It looked just like a manicured skating rink, perfectly flat sloping slightly downhill.  We thought we might be able to walk up it by staying on the side in the snow, off the ice, but the banks were way too steep so that proved impossible.  We hiked through the woods alongside the creek hoping to find better footing on the creek as we went up the hill toward the ridge in back of our place. 

No such luck, and the going through the woods was so thick with evergreen trees and underbrush that it was difficult walking.  

In the woods, the snow was not so deep that we couldn't make it, but we would have been better off with our snowshoes, although again, the thick brush would have made snowshoes less than ideal.  

Eventually, we kind of gave up, found a place where we had to literally slide down the bank, very carefully shuffle across the creek like a couple of old crogglers, climb up the opposite bank (no easy task) and head home through the woods.  All in all, we still got a lot of exercise and fresh air so it was a good outing. 

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Chicken Mama and Gilligan will be here for lunch today so I made a rhubarb pie first thing this morning.  (No, not from fresh rhubarb but from a bag of rhubarb pie mix I had in the freezer from last summer.)  That for dessert along with a main meal of chicken squares, chicken gravy, cranberry sauce and green beans (boy, do I still have a lot of green beans from last year's garden in the freezer) and all involved should be happy.

Papa Pea and I hope to put in some work on next season's wood supply today.  Our back wood working area is usually too wet and muddy this early in the season, but because of no great amount of snow for us this winter, it's already dried out nicely.

We felt a real heat wave this morning upon arising when we noticed the thermometer read 24 degrees.  A bit of a change from the single digit numbers we've been having.  

The sun is shining again to it's gonna be a good day.  Hope yours is, too!