Waking up to snow on 2010’s first day of spring, was, quite frankly, a big relief!

Yorick, a giant marmalade cat, stays warm on the back of a fluffy pregnant mama.

Much as I enjoyed that balmy prelude to spring the week before, all the breezy sunshine cleared the sludge off the gardens and I was feeling severely pressured to get out there and hoe. Hoeing actually wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, but then the temptation was to plant. And it’s really best to hold off on that for a few weeks, at least outside, here in crazy old Wisconsin where the saying is: “Well, if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes.”

I suppose that really may be a saying everywhere but in San Francisco or Seattle or some such other place where the weather is pretty consistent. But here our last average frost date is somewhere during the first week of May and temptations to plant in the ground months ahead of that red star on my calendar are usually rewarded with disappointment. So the snow on Saturday (and the weekend lows in the 20s), were a relief in the sense that they alleviated the latent guilt I had about not spending those beautiful 60 degree days the week before in the dirt.

Instead, I’ve been celebrating the return of spring in my glass greenhouse – looking out at both the sun and the snow, as well my pretty horses and fluffy sheep. But I haven’t been neglecting the gardens, by any means. This week I seeded more flats of onions and shallots, as well as a slew of flowers. Hopefully, by the time they need to get free of their cells, the spring will have settled enough welcome them out.

These nasturtiums are going to make lovely spicy flowers just in time to add to our Circle M Salad Mix for the first CSA boxes in June. But these little onions need a long season. They won’t be ready until August.