At Last, a Sign

 The first couple of crocus that Kiki planted last fall opened their little blue flowers on Saturday.

While there are still some wintry days ahead, this past weekend we were able to get out, finish off some chicken wire fencing, clear out the cucumber bed near the garage that I'd left from last fall, pull out hoses and rain barrels, trade the snow blower for the bicycles in the shed, and run 10 miles in relative comfort. There are rainy days in the 30's forecast for later this week, but the weekend saw temperatures in the high 50's. 

While it is as true for a Minnesotan as it was for Thomas Covenant, "the Unbeliever" (when he was told at the beginning of the fantasy novel Lord Foul's Bane, "You cannot hope" regarding his leprosy diagnosis) you can't help but hope a little.

The greenhouse finally burst. I had to get more of the delicious variety tomatoes out. This entailed a lot of repotting and setting up a table in the sunshine. They had grown taller than the greenhouse allowed. The fact is, some of them don't look all that great. But it is still early. I put Jobe's garden stakes in a number of them as an experiment, to see if fertilizing them this way helps. Time will tell.