‘Dig’ The Earth

Our first snow of the season and it has to be a yucky one. Monday morning it started snowing and it left about an inch on the roads. Tuesday it was more of the same until about 6 PM.

Wet, heavy, slippery snow started to fall in blankets across the landscape. Great for plants, bad for driving. I called my mom who’d come to visit us earlier in the day with dad and they were on their way home at about 8:30 PM. They’d been trying to get a hold of my brother because he had stayed to work late with DH. Dad wanted me to convey the message that if he could stay where he was to do so. The roads were treacherous and the visibility low.

By the time I called DH to let him know they had already left the office. The next 45 minutes was tough. This will be 4 years since our bad accident that left my husband broken and my car in pieces. The last thing anyone wanted was for that to happen again. I had a knot in my stomach and I thought for sure I was going to lose my supper. Finally at :15 after 9 DH walked in the door and I could relax. Then my thoughts went to my brother. He lives with my parents an hour north and therefore in the middle of the heavier snowfall.

Thankfully he was also OK. I called him an hour after my DH got home just to make sure he’d made it home OK. He said you couldn’t even see the main roads and that the country road they live on was like a washboard with drifts of snow 5″ deep. Yikes.

Today we are in for lots of wind, rain and snow. There is actually a wind warning in our area. You can hear the wind howling or “talking” as my daughter calls it outside the house. It’s a little unnerving. Hopefully we didn’t leave anything in the yard that will get blown away by the 70 MPH gusts.

Last week I noticed as I looked out the window that my tulips are peaking out of the ground as are my daylilies, wormwood and phlox.  It won’t be long and we will have a lush display of many shades of green with different textures and shapes of leaves.  It made me itch to do some gardening.

My “winter” sowing has become a moot project.  Since it is officially spring I’m going to try the same technique but without the benefit of snow cover or so I thought. Last night in an effort to keep my little 3 year old entertained I asked her to help me go through my seed collection and remove seed pods from some dried out sedum flowers.  She thought that was great.  Later I checked the weather report since it had been raining most of the day and it mentioned something about snow on Monday.

Today so far has been a soggy, messy, rain/snow mix.  Not enough to look pretty or stick, just enough to make you feel blah.  My only consolation is that my flowers and plants that are in the ground are getting plenty of water right now.

I’ve picked out the seeds that I want to start indoors today.  Tomatoes, basil, and easter egg plant are among the candidates.  I also have several varieties of peppers that I want to get going before it gets to late.  When you think about 90 days to mature that means I’ll need to have plants ready by the first part of June if I want fruits before the first frost.   Any later than the mid part of June and I’m asking for a very short window to harvest any fruits off my warmer weather plants.  I’ll keep you posted how things go.

With several inches of snow on the ground, below freezing temperatures and days that the roads are so icy I won’t venture out even to get the mail – I really miss being outside.  My three year old wants to play in the snow so badly, but when temps are subzero and I have an infant to care for it isn’t wise to go outside.

I tried before I gave birth to rearrange things so that we could do some winter sowing, but it didn’t work out in time.  I was suffering from some pretty serious edema and it took all I had just to get things ready to make room for the baby.  So, I’ve still got messes of items I had to move around and put away.  If only I could get my 8 foot table cleaned off I’d have a place to sow some seeds (we had to clean out some shelves and the stuff ended up on the table).  There are more pressing matters on my mind though – making sure the kiddies are fed and warm, the house is clean (as well as I can do it right now) and that I don’t lose it in the process.

I sure do miss gardening though.  In my quiet times when I’m nursing the baby I think about how I can take her outside with me in the spring and keep the bugs off her.  Sun protection is a no brainer, but I’m still trying to think of a non chemical way to keep the flies and skeeters away from her.  I guess I could drape mosquito netting over her pack n’ play.  By the time I’ll be ready to spend more time outside she’ll be close to crawling age so I’ll have to set up a nice clean play area for her.  My three year old is my little helper.  She loves to play in the dirt and is learning already how to identify the flowers and herbs I plant.  Hopefully this year we can have a productive garden that we can all enjoy.