Spring fever

The transition from winter to spring is the hardest for me. By the end of February, I am ready for warm weather. We have ordered the seeds. I am itching to get in the garden. The weather teases us with a 50°F day on Sunday and more snow on Tuesday morning. It feels like the ground will never thaw.

Tuesday morning snow

I realize that it is too soon for spring. The ground needs to stay frozen for awhile yet. The worst thing that can happen is a prolonged warm spell in early March followed by a late freeze. Under those conditions, the trees break bud and the young leaves and flowers are damaged by frost. Today is cloudless and lovely. Next Sunday we are supposed to see 60°.

I heard a red-winged blackbird calling Saturday morning. Yesterday, Hilda and I saw a huge flock—all males displaying their red epaulets—when we were out and about. The males come back to stake out a territory before the females arrive. This particular flock of birds was eating spilled grain in a corn field. I wonder if anyone had calculated how many extra blackbirds there are based on this artificial energy input into the natural season.

We have to be content with starting seeds inside, beginning with the onions. Hilda has grow-lights in the two upstairs bedrooms for the flats.

Onion seedlings

In a few weeks, it will be time to plant tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse. Still we have to wait a month before the cold-tolerant potatoes and peas go in the ground. And whether or not we can do that depends on how much rain we get. We’re not coming off much snow pack (so far), and unless we get more snow, there won’t be flooding from the thaw.

We had dinner guests Sunday. I made Mediterranean pot roasted chicken with lemon, kalamata olives, onion, and sun-dried tomatoes. We hadn’t had that in a long time.

Mediterranean pot roasted chicken

To celebrate our return from Florida, I made a key lime pie with key lime juice that we bought at the Fort Myers Beach Publix (a southern grocery store chain). Key lime pie is everywhere in Florida. We had it twice in the week I was there. We were excited to find it in the grocery. We each got some to take home. Jan made pie first, and sent us a text that it had turned out well using the recipe on the bottle. I made the pie Sunday morning and even took the extra step of putting decorative lime slices on top.

Key lime pie

When I was at Woodman’s on Monday, I saw that they have identical bottles of key lime juice on the shelf. And I thought it was something special.