Wonderfully wet

As I write this, a sandhill crane is honking somewhere overhead, and there is a big patch of visible grass on my sunny hill.  Winter is definitely retreating.  She is taking her sweet time, with lots of snow and below-normal temperatures, (and some showy hoarfrost, just to remind us that we do in fact, like winter around here) but she is no match for the lengthening days.

But oh, what a thankfully soggy mud season we are entering!  It literally did not sink in until recently just how much our drought of last summer started in January.  Last year was a non-winter, not just in freaky temperatures, but in snow.  This winter, happily we are almost 20 inches over our average snowfall (twice the amount we received last season!), with another 7 inches or so of rain. 

So I am grateful for mud season this March, and equally grateful to have the hoop house, where I can get my gardening season started despite the slower start to spring.