Seasonal lament

Spring in New England, gotta love it.  Used your heat and air conditioning in one day?  Yup.  One day you're in a t-shirt, the next morning you wake up to a dusting of snow.  Although, it's still beautiful.

And this will be the view out my living room window next year.

I need to find a good tree person to work on that mulberry tree in the center of the pasture.  Over the years the horses ate all the lower branches and now there's bittersweet vines beginning to choke it.  If you've never had mulberries, they're the most delicious berries ever, so saving this tree is a must.

I have my finished plans for the ADU in my hot little hands, so now I'm just waiting for the septic design.

This little woolly bear caterpillar crawled out from under a snowbank the other day.  Little early, dude.  You can see him just above the crack in the step.

Yesterday a big fox was out in the pasture, and Fish & Game has started to ask people to bring in bird feeders because the bears are beginning to emerge from their winter dens.  Love these signs of spring!

These signs, not so much.

Ugh.  The big barn is temporarily a large flooded mess.  Mom & I spent a few hours pumping it out to try to get it to dry up.  I had to move the snow blowers and my air compressor up onto pallets to get them out of the water.  In some spots it was about 3" deep.  Always an adventure!

Wildlife

Just some random shots from the past few months.

 

Meteorological Spring!

To be fair, the winter of 2018/2019 wasn't all that bad.  Instead of the long stretches of bitter arctic cold, we would have a few days here or there.  Unfortunately, we did have a lot of rain, and that made for a very icy winter.

In the past few months I've made a small amount of headway on the new living quarters. A septic designer has been retained and as soon as the snow is gone, they can get in here to survey and dig test pits and whatever else it is they do.  Since it will be the first phase of the entire project and will be located behind the existing cape and new addition, the septic system will need to be completed first.

A building design and floor plan are in the works, as well.  It's really starting to feel more like a real project, and less like an abstract idea.

My mom has also been gracious enough to allow me to set up my little greenhouse so I can start my seeds.  I'm sad that I won't have my gardens to explore, because seeing all the plants emerge in spring has always been my favorite part of gardening.  I can still wander through Mom's gardens and check my own plants in their temporary holding beds, but it's just not the same.  I'm kind of glad that I've been doing so much container gardening over the past six years, because that's going to be my first year garden until I get a yard situated.  I did have an idea to build terrace gardens into the hill next to the old run-in shed, but we'll see how much time I have to do that.

Since I can't remember where I put my old plant starting equipment, I splurged on some Burpee seed starting kits.  I like the mat that wicks water up to the plants, so I don't have to spend time misting the seedlings every morning.  I've started two types of beefsteak tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, grape tomatoes, sweet peppers, and for the first time ever, Radicchio.  I'm also trying to start some of the perennial seeds I collected from my old gardens...I'm not sure they'll actually grow, but it's worth a shot!

So that's where I'm at!  We have a small snow storm coming in tomorrow,  but after that we're looking at temperatures in the 40s, so things will start to break soon.  Let the great melt commence!