What a tough month! I’m overwhelmed at every level. When I watch the news, the deep dishonestly, corruption, and incompetence at the national level blows me away. At a local level, I find that my role on the selectboard is leaving me feeling drained. And then there is the fact that it keeps on snowing! I finally planted peas anyway (April 18, in the warm sunshine).
Lower garden with pea trellis yesterday morning.
I am normally anxious to start planting seeds in early March, but this year it just seemed too early. Finally I got some seeds in pots on April 7… the bulk of the tomatoes, peppers, and flowers. They just sat there in the cold for a week and half until I stuck the flats under the woodstove; now they are starting to sprout, since we’re still having regular fires. I had started a few tomatoes and broccoli to test seed about a month earlier, and they’re under grow lights now.
The flowering orchids have brought me joy, and about a week ago a begonia that my mom gave us started blooming too.
Outside, crocus! Every year I am so grateful for these first cheery little guys. So brave.
And the spring beauties are up (I’ve seen a few blooms elsewhere, but the ones in our yard are feeling shy). Harbinger of Spring (Erigenia bulbosa) is blooming, as are the female flowers of our cultivated hazelnuts. The male catkins still haven’t released pollen, so we’re hoping the female flowers can hang on for a while longer in order to make nuts.
Winter wonderland? April 19.
Julia Blyth 
I share your joys and your miseries over the vagaries of this so-called spring. Probably we’ll be complaining the summer is too hot all too soon. Still, there have been high spots and the mourning dove nestlings have hatched–their mom has become quite used to me going in and out the front door. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched the entire process so close up of nest building, egg laying and now she’s feeding them all for me to watch from a window or from a few feet away outside. : )