As I mentioned yesterday, we had a beautiful weekend here. Temps reached 17C/62F. They’d been calling for rain all weekend – and we got some on Saturday, but it didn’t start until early afternoon.

So the boys and I

Spent some time cleaning up the dead stuff in the catio. Normally, I don’t do much cleaning this early, but Burton has been eating the seed heads of the sedums… and of course…. barfing them up all over my floors. So anything still standing that he could chew on got chopped. As soon as I dropped the compost bags off at the compost depot, the rains moved in so I timed everything right.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, so I decided it would be a good day to prune the roses.

Since most of the roses are in the front yard, Furby accompanied me for that task.

And since the weather was so warm, all our snow melted and I made several exciting discoveries.

Pretty much all winter, the raised beds were covered with a thick layer of snow. And under that snow, it was quite toast it seems. The first picture is a zinnia from the fall. It’s quite flattened, but if you look closely, you’ll see it’s starting to form a bud. The middle pic is a carrot! It must have been a stray seed that managed to germinate under the snow, because I cleared all the carrots from the bed in the fall. And the last picture isn’t from the beds – but in the front walkway garden! It too spent the winter under a thick pile of snow…. and the Black Eyed Susans managed to create a small bud! And not just one – there were actually three – but this was the most well-formed!

Now that they are uncovered, they will probably get killed by the frost. Though we’ve enjoyed some nice warm days, Mother Nature will still find time to freeze us out! Temps are expected to dip drastically today or tomorrow. But the above is an amazing example of the insulating properties of snow!

There are a couple things the frost won’t bother much…

The snowdrops have finally started to show. I have them in both the woodland garden and the catio.

I have three clumps of Hellebores around the base of the holly bush, and this one is in full bloom. Such a beautiful flower that can take all that Mother Nature throws at her!

Soaking up the sun certainly lifted my spirits. Even if it means I never made it into the sewing studio on the weekend!