April snow

The weather station was sad all weekend. This photo is from yesterday morning. The only difference today is that the forecast showed a downward arrow and rain coming from the cloud. Frankly, we could use some rain, but as of this evening, it looks like the front will miss us again.

Sad, sad little weather station

We don’t need snow, but that was what we got Wednesday morning. Tuesday night, Terry said, “There’ll be snow on the grass in the morning, but it should all melt off the road.”

Sure enough, this was the sight that greeted me as the sun came up.

The view from the kitchen Wednesday morning. Note that lawn should be green at this time of year.

I hopped in my car at the regular time Wednesday morning, doo, dee, doo, dee, doo, and soon discovered that the snow had NOT melted off the roads. It had, in fact, turned to slush which glaciated under the pressure of tires driving on top of it. I got stuck behind a snowplow immediately after I pulled out of the driveway. On April 4! The plow and I soon parted ways, at which point I realized just how bad the ice was. It was a slow drive to work.

I will say this, though. It’s better to have a slow spring than and early warm-up followed by a late frost. We were afraid we’d lost all the apples last year when the temperatures dropped below freezing while the trees were flowering. I can hope that once it gets warm this year, it will stay warm.

The weather station may say winter, but the calendar says spring. Hilda and I went to Gardenfest on Saturday. Some talks were better than others, but we both learned some things. There’s a new variety of cherry tomato we’d like to try. “Little Napoli” is supposed to have the taste and texture of a Roma in a smaller size. We also got some way cool harvesting aprons. They cost a small fortune, but we justified it on the grounds that we were supporting an entrepreneur. 

Our new harvesting aprons

The bib has a big pocket in it and the apron has a wire around the top to keep it open. Awesome idea, isn’t it? Plus the light blue one has a zipper along the bottom for easy unloading, provided you are harvesting something fairly durable. I wouldn’t do it with tomatoes. The woman selling the aprons only had one zipper apron left, so we got one without a zipper for the softer fruits and veg.

Gardenfest served its purpose of getting me all excited about playing in the dirt again. Perhaps it really will warm up by mid-week like it’s supposed to. We’ll see.