Where Is Spring

Last year's (2016) March garden. When would 2017 surprise me with the same delights?

Last year at this time, my garden was full of life. The pictures above were taken for Easter 2016, which was on March 27.

This year, the garden just started to emerge from under the three feet of snow that fell upon us two weeks ago. 

As the snow starts to recede, I am hopeful that soon the garden will be full of color. It is the end of March after all, the sun has its obligation to warm up the muddy grounds, evaporate the icy pools of water, and coax the spring bulbs into activity. 

Here, in northeast U.S., this coming week we will see the temperatures a bit more Spring-like (I mean above freezing). 

This past summer, on each Saturday afternoon the mailman was passing me in the garden weeding, digging, and cleaning. So, one day he stopped and asked what I did in the middle of winter when I could not be outside gardening. 

"I go bonkers", was my reply.  Yep, I am almost there, bonkers. I need the garden to recover my sanity again. There has been so much turmoil at work that I need a place/space that is as removed as possible from the tragedies of my job.

No-garden weekends for me a full of cleaning, food shopping, cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, blogging a bit and reading good books. This past weekend I re-tried my recipe for high-fiber brownies with less chocolate chips added. The recipe has no added sugar except for the one in the chips, so I used 3/4 of a cup of chocolate chips, rather than 1 cup, and the brownies were still excellent. 

Later today, I will try a simple and cheap recipe for crackers. I will let you know, if the experiment succeeds.

I also will look at some websites I discovered yesterday. French country cottage was one of them. I will have plenty of material to explore - the blog started in 2010!

Happy Sunday!