It has been a month since my last blog entry. I can hardly believe so many days have passed, but I haven't had much new to write about. The weather is stuck in late winter rains, not really warm enough to start gardening but at least not snowing us under like some areas of the country have had to deal with. The weather is weird around the world for that matter. There are still reports of floods and winter storms of abnormal proportions.

There are also continuing reports about the great earthquake that caused the tidal wave, with surveys of the ocean floor showing considerable upheaval in the earth's crust there. The death toll is well over 200,000 and may never be accurately known. People in the stricken areas are still struggling to put their lives back together again.

I did finally sow the first spinach seeds of the season two days ago. An opening in the rain let the soil dry out enough to make five short rows and sprinkle in a few seeds. I chose an area near the fall peas where there had been a lot of compost and mulch applied and noted how much darker and looser the soil was this spring. The heavy red clay is slowly but steadily improving.

I've got a few cabbage and broccoli seedlings under the grow light, but they're not quite big enough to go out yet. The organizer says it is almost time to start the tomato seeds, too. I'm dithering about when to sow peas outside, since it still seems a bit too wet and cold at night. Usually peas can take a lot of cold weather, but they'll rot if the soil stays this soggy. I don't see any point to feeding peas to the squirrels and birds like I unintentionally did last spring, so I'm hoping for the rain to taper off before making the first planting of snow peas. I may wait until the spinach starts coming up before trying the peas.

I keep looking for the first daffodils, but so far only their leaves are showing. The day lilies are coming up, so the garden is stirring from its winter slumber. A few turnip greens survived the winter and may yet end up as spring greens in the kitchen. It doesn't look like any of the Swiss chard made it for spring greens, though.

The crafting has been considerably slowed by my recovery from the pacemaker operation. The area is still easily irritated by moving my arm too much, so I'm doing a lot of reading instead of crafting. I did finish another child's sweater and have another one about half done, but I have to keep stopping frequently.

I'm hoping that things will liven up soon so I'll have more to write about. Rapunzel needs to have its compost taken out to the garden so I can start a new load. Both compost tumblers have started digesting kitchen scraps with new enthusiasm, so the night temperatures are climbing enough that the tumblers' microorganisms are reviving again. Spring will yet creep out of winter's shadows.