I don't know that I can sit in the house today...

It looks like I'll just have to put on rain gear and go putz around outside. I miss that nice weather we were having. I want it back. In fact, the weather site says it'll be raining forever, or at least for the next week, which might as well as be forever.

This is no time to be stuck in the house. Things are happening outside! Daffodils are up, and would like to bloom. Snowdrops, crocus, cyclamen and Iris reticulata are blooming. The Osoberry (Indian plum) is budding out, and the alders are blushing. The temperatures are warming and the sunlight lasts longer every day.

The veggie garden beds are full of soil, and I've even got some shallots planted already. I don't know if they'll survive or not, but Mike found a plastic shopping bag of them just sitting all lonely and abandoned on the sidewalk at his office recently. We thought we might as well stick them in the ground and see what happens. I've planted a dozen bulbs. I love shallots, I hope they thrive.

We've been playing with seeds this past week. I've potted up some white ribes seeds (and will do some red ribes seeds today), and scattered seeds for columbines. Mike has gotten a number of items out of pots, where they had overwintered in the courtyard, and out in the big bed in the front of the house and in the shade garden next to it. That shade garden, btw, is coming right along. Mike has pulled a number of trees out recently, and planting areas are becoming apparent.

It's still raining - sigh. I'm just gonna have to get wet, I suppose. I hope I don't melt. ;-)

Brrr....

It's still very cold here at One Big Tree. Right now the thermometer is reading 24.6F... which is warmer by a degree and a half than it was when I got up at 6:00. MyCast leads me to expect a chance of light snow throughout the day. The weatherman on the radio warns us that more snow is expected tonight, with accumulation.

I haven't gone out in a few days to work on anything - it's been too darn cold. I suppose today I'll just have to bundle up. I'd like to get more of those blackberries knocked down along the driveway. There is one large mass of canes remaining - and the snow and ice has reduced its height by 1/2. It almost seems as if some part of my work has been done for me.

Yesterday, I walked about the few trails I've blazed through the trees this past year. I made it down to the spring, down to the bog, out to the far property corner, and up the northern property line. The spring is bubbling forth as usual. The bog still shows some open puddles of water, although I still can't find any evidence of water flowing. That it was still open after a few days of freeze is encouraging, as I would love to have a spring on the property. I also noticed that the upper wetland is draining across the north corner of the property again. All that rain we had this month has filled all the wetlands back up.

While I was out clearing blackberries the other day, Mike dug a ditch across the area. This ditch now connects the ditch that drains the neighbor's building site (and ends promptly at our property line) and the ditch that we dug along and across our driveway. Hopefully, water will no longer back up and drain out all along the driveway - it was causing quite a muddy mess! Now we have a little stream that meanders through the area I am clearing. We have decided to clear many of the douglas firs that have grown up crooked due to the blackberries, as well as many of the alders. We'll replant in native shrubbery, rhodedendrons, azaleas, and the like. I plan to maintain the defunct logging road back there as a grassy meadow, and will strew wildflower seed mix back there to promote a meadow appearance, which will be framed against the thick forest vegetation of the neighbor's un-landscaped property.

I hope you're toasty and warm this morning!