Birthday Blizzard

For the second time in my memory, a blizzard was what I awoke to on March 23rd.  The other time I was 5, and since my parents had promised me a bike for my birthday, I still insisted they take me to get one.  The drive to the store back then was probably no more than 5 miles but I still remember it as a harrowing experience.

This year, the only traveling was done on foot, to the local grocery store, for milk.  It was like walking in 8 inches of mashed potatoes over an inch of frozen lard.   The plow didn’t even come by my house until well after dark in the evening.  Maybe they had put away all of the snow removal equipment for the year already.  On the upside, it is only 10 degrees out this morning so that should get the sap running in the maple tree again and we should pick up another syrup batch of maple sap.

Being stuck at home yesterday was not such a bad thing though.  I had fallen a bit behind on my plantings and I was able to get another 15 flats of things started:  everything from broccoli, to cabbage, more tomatoes, peppers, celery, chamomile, fennel, and a few other things that I cannot pull to mind at the moment.

Patti built some new shelves in the basement and the supports to put up more lights, effectively doubling the amount of plants we can have going here.  Our friend David, and whose house we are helping him rid himself of lawn and convert all available area,  has readied his three-season porch which faces to the south with large tables for seedlings once they are potted up.  As soon as the weather is consistently warmer we will start moving larger plants over to there.

I have probably about 1500 plants in the basement, with maybe a third of them ready to pot up.  Upstairs at windows there are maybe 400 more, including 200+ zinnias Patti planted.  We love having the zinnias around in the summer and are one of the few things we grow which is not food for us.  It is for the butterflies they attract.

So a day away from the office was an unexpected gift for my birthday, and gave me some extra time to get things done.

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