 |
| March? |
After the excitement of the wedding last week, this week seemed quiet and a bit dull. It was just the usual stuff. School. Work. Chores. Cold. Snow. I always expect March to be dramatically different from February. I should know better by now. March is still winter here. In a rare year we may see snowdrops and crocuses by the end of the month. This is not a rare year. Most of the ground in the garden, meadow, and lawn is still under three feet of snow. It's making me a little crazy.
This coming week we are supposed to warm into the high 40's. That will be nice – if it actually happens. It will take a long time for all this snow to melt. I’d like to see the ground again. I can feel the garden sleeping under the snow, ready to wake up. One happy sign of approaching spring has started – egg production has increased down at the barn. For a while we weren’t getting any eggs, now we’re getting six a day. Soon we’ll have enough to start selling them again.
I looked at my planting schedule, the calendar I make each year with the dates written in for starting seeds indoors and planting outdoors. I set the dates based on records I’ve kept for the past 15 years of living and gardening here. According to my calendar, I should be planting peas and the first batch of lettuce outdoors this week. That’s not going to happen. I need to prune the orchard, but I'm not going to trudge through three feet of snow to do it.
On Saturday Josiah worked for our friend Chris preparing for the maple season. He spent the day tramping through the woods checking the sap lines. The snow was deep and covered with a thick crust of ice, which made it a hard job. He came home tired and sore. The sap run is getting a late start this year. It should start soon.
I just finished reading a fun series of books, The Flavia de Luce Novels by Alan Bradley. Flavia is an 11 year old girl living on an ancestral estate in England in the 1950's. She’s a chemistry savant who helps solve a number of murder cases. These books were great. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I read all seven novels in three weeks and when I was done I felt sad there weren’t more. Now I’m going through book withdrawal, looking for my next reading adventure, feeling restless.
It was so wonderful being with so much family last week. The time we were together was too short. It makes me miss them all and long for another time when we can be together again. Someone else needs to get married so we have a reason to gather. Things are so dull around here, I wasn’t even inspired to take many photos during the week. The few I took are the same old scenes of snow drifts and bare trees. I’m sick of pictures of snow.
Dinner is almost ready. We’re having fried cabbage and rice with a side of egg rolls. We’re eating the last of the cabbages from last year’s garden. We’ve run out of carrots and potatoes. And we’re almost out of onions. Winter needs to depart so I can get the garden going.
