Historic Blizzard, 60's, and New Greenhouse Technique

 This is an image of the Little Snowblower that Could. It began snowing last night about 5:00. We awoke with more than a foot of snow on the ground this morning when we woke, and another several inches on the way. It's still snowing right now (3:00 on Sunday afternoon). It does not show any signs of letting up. This image is currently in the lower left-hand corner of my computer screen:

We will probably have to take the wee electric snowblower out again later on. 2" it can handle easily. It really is a lifesaver - or, perhaps more to the point, a back saver. Got it for about $100 six years ago when we moved in. Worth every penny. 

Significantly, it doesn't have a small gasoline engine. I hate those things. Is it the pollution? Or is it the fact that stupid small engines are always broken. And then you bring them to some rough-boy, at great expense, who will look at it thoughtfully and talk about stale fuel in the tank, or the carburetor, or the plugs, or whatever it is that is always making it not work (this time). 

A good, honest shovel would be even better. But this is (picture Frosty the Snowman from the 1969 cartoon classic written by Romeo Muller, directed by Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., with the narration by Jimmy Durante) "Heart Attack Snow!" (In place of "It's Christmas Snow! And Christmas snow is magical.") 

It's a bit of a setback, after enjoying temperatures that hit the 60's last week, and every last bit of snow having melted. 

It will melt by week's end. I will not be clearing the solar panels.

Two weeks ago, as of now (!!), I was looking at the beds for next year, and buying seeds and so on, when I realized that the peppers should already be in the greenhouse. A frenzied couple of hours later, and they were. Last week, the tomatoes went in. 

And now for something completely different:

I am piloting a new, cunning technique for greenhouse planting. Instead of putting the seeds in small pots and leaving it at that until they grow to large and then potting them up, only to discover that real estate in the greenhouse is at a premium, I'm putting the small pots into the larger pots. This has the dual effect of giving a clear idea of how much greenhouse space is needed by the larger plants and bringing the seedlings up closer to the lights.

There are a couple of plans for changes this year. We're going to devote the 6x4 bed near the wildflower garden on the hill to eggplant and calendula. This makes me anxious for my next delivery from Seed Savers Exchange to arrive. We've had a tough time with eggplant before, but try, try again. It would be ideal to have those in the greenhouse already. I plan to prepare the pots so that we can just pop them in during the work-week. 

The wood piles weigh on my mind. We have quite a bit of wood still on the patio. It would be good to have the space clear for furniture for long summer evenings. We also have piles of wood by the fence which are extremely untidy. Even if we are burning wood until June, we're still not going to get through both. Which stack to burn? And which stack to (and I dread the prospect) move to the side of the house?

Another project on the horizon is the fence and gate situation. 

There is a movement afoot to get a puppy named Pants in June. This will require a sealed back yard so the pup can't escape. This means that we need to fix or replace the fence/gate on the north side of the house, and build one on the south side. We want to do this, ideally, entirely on our side of the property line, thus avoiding any weird talks with neighbors. 

Plans within plans.