fleeting cold and sheeting, old

Beautiful spring weather has helped to make our outdoor-work time really pleasant. Todd has been hauling wood...

...and clipping out extraneous metal debris on our old fences.

They were in pretty bad shape...

...so they're all being replaced this week!

Many of our old fence posts have bird houses attached, but only one of the houses is chock-full of bluebird eggs.  Todd set up a post about five feet away from the old post and quickly transferred the bird house to minimize nest disturbance.  Mama bluebird has been happily visiting the new spot and hasn't seemed to notice her new real estate!

We've also got nesting finches in our front porch eaves.  See the little head?

We're pretty suspicious characters and the finch pair watch us closely as we traverse the porch each day.  

Besides regular work, I've been planting cold-hardy seedlings out into the garden. I've planted in about 1/4 of the space, and we're plowing up another plot in a week or so.  Hooray!

Sunny days...blue skies and fluffy white clouds overhead.

Such a nice variety!

The apple tree is in full bloom and the blossoms have an intoxicating scent.

Dead nettle is rising in the back fields, and their little purple tips are the exact color of the redbuds that border their space.

The woods around our house and all along our main road are full of redbuds and dogwoods.  Coupled with the chartreuse color of the tender new leaves, the colors are gorgeous!

I love cutting a few branches for the front porch.

We've got horses directly and diagonally across the street, and I've discovered that there's a grazing pasture just beyond our back woods.  I can see a group of horses out in the mid-afternoon, peacefully eating.

It all makes for a wonderful and bucolic atmosphere for being outside.  

My perennials are starting to fill in!

Claudia is feeling more frisky with the warmer weather too.

Blooming apple tree, rapidly-sprouting roses, peonies, hydrangeas, and lilacs, unfurling hostas and maple leaves, all after a prolonged period of warm weather.  And then, directly in middle of two 70-degree stretches, we have...dum dum DUM!...snow.  

Snow!

Tuesday night's forecast:  rain turning to snow, with up to an inch of accumulation.  Temperatures dropping down to 27 degrees.  

If I do nothing, we would have another year with no apples.  Many of my seedlings would be toast.  My bleeding hearts and roses would probably die.  Just like last year, our hostas and even hardier perennials like ground geraniums would survive, but be blackened.  

I'm going to have to pull out every old sheet in the house and cover as much new, tender growth as I want to salvage.  All seedlings will have to be covered, again.  It's a big frustration with a midwestern spring.  Hardy annuals prefer cooler weather, so if you want beautiful May and June blooms, you need to get them into the ground as soon as possible in April so that they can establish roots and set up buds. Moving them into the ground frees up space under grow lights as well. But, of course, you run the risk of these random freezes.  So I'll be rolling up my sleeves and covering, covering, covering on Tuesday afternoon.  Gritting my teeth and reminding myself that this hard work should pay off nicely in a month or so...I hope!

Have a great week!