A Taste of Spring

Mother Nature is oh so fickle.  I took these photos last Saturday. In case you can't tell that's a banana Creamie in Barrett's right hand.  It was so warm last week that almost all of the snow melted.  The kids were playing outside in shorts and t shirts (it was in the upper 50's).  They had a lot of fun playing with sidewalk chalk and just being outside.  Ruby was in heaven.  She could dig and sniff and lie on the deck in the sun again.  She hardly came inside during the day.

Barrett taking a spin on his bike. 

The warm weather and the fact that I could see my flower beds, made me a little crazy and I had Justin pick up four pony packs of pansies for me to plant.  The ground was the consistency of chocolate pudding.  I basically just stuck the spade in and wiggled until I had a hold big enough to slip the pansy's roots in.  

Here's a close up of my newly planted flowers.  I wasn't delusional enough to think it wouldn't snow again, that's why I chose pansies.  They are very cold hardy, in fact I even had two plants that survived the winter.  It did snow the next and the next and we had a little break on Tuesday before more snow on Wednesday, but the worst was waking up on Thursday morning to about a foot and a half of snow.  It took Justin 45 minutes to snow blow the driveway.  My poor pansies are buried so deeply that they are only a dim memory.  I'm so glad I took some pictures of them.  I'm considering this an experiment, because usually by the time I get some pansies planted the weather has turned so hot and dry that half of them wither up and die.  I'm hoping that by getting them in the ground so early this year that the roots will be established enough that they will survive the summer.  Time will tell.