Take That, Winter

Most of you in the United States have seen some harsh winter weather in the last month (special shout out to those of you in New England).  Here's what my back yard looked like last week:

and that was before the next storm dropped about 8 more inches of the white stuff.  Kids have been home from school and underfoot which has made it difficult to get anything productive done.  But, in the last few days we've seen some warm temperatures and lots of melting, and it has put me in the mood from some gardening. The snow actually helped a bit in the garden, allowing us to tramp out various ideas for future beds and see what they would look like.  So while the weather outside was frightful, I spent some time with seed catalogs and graph paper, dreaming of gardening weather to come.

This weekend I decided to start a few seeds, mostly annual flowers to intersperse with the vegetables.  I needed some quick plant markers so I punched some colored card stock (the colors conjuring up Easter eggs) in flower shapes, wrote the plant names on the front and added a tiny dot of hot glue and a toothpick to the back.

Very quick and easy.

That's Slim Pick'ns (or Slim, for short) in the background, my garden kitty.

It still seems a long way off, which is probably a good thing given the amount of tasks that I need to accomplish before the last frost, but these little seedlings warming on my window sill (and a lone crocus) remind me that spring is just around the corner.