I’m writing this as I’m down in my backyard checking on my garden. I’m pretty disappointed. The bed I turned for my peas with high hopes of planting this weekend is now frozen solid. It’s rock hard. I can’t get the shovel out of the soil. I would say I’m not feeling real good about shoveling any more snow from my garden. Not when it can freeze up again so fast. I checked the straw bale I was hoping would be a good method for planting early. It feels ice cold inside.

So I’m thinking maybe I can’t rush Mother Nature.

Around the shoveled bed, the snow pack has frozen into an icy mass as we’ve gotten a lot of rain sinking into it recently. The good news is that it is steadily shrinking. It’s shrunk to about 1 ft deep now. I’m surprised it isn’t shrinking faster with the rain we’ve had, but it’s not. It’s a heavily overcast day today with no sun warming things up. Snowflakes are beginning to drift down now. I think we’re getting about an inch tonight.

No crocuses, no daffodils. I don’t need to go looking for them, because its obvious there aren’t any. I can’t even see the hellebore’s that were in bloom last December before we got all this snow.

I did see a beautiful female bluebird near my feeder this morning. Her feathers were puffed out and ruffled in the wind. I would have loved a photo but she came and went faster than I could locate my camera. I’m taking the bluebird as my fleeting sign that fairer days will come. But they’re not right around the corner I’m afraid.