Well, the snow has been gone for a week and we finally had some tropical weather here in central Iowa...(low 50's). The robins are pulling worms and the lawn is starting to green. Time to clean up the flower beds.

I spent some time this week pruning the dead foliage from last fall's mums and fountain grass. I always clean these plants up in the spring. I suddenly had a lot of new stuff for my pile.

Usually, at this time of year I just empty my 3x3x3 bin and refill it... layering in the cuttings with the old stuff. And soon the pile is doing it's thing.

As I began to empty the pile...I suddenly found that the core of my pile was still frozen.(rock hard frozen) We had a rain/ice storm the first week of Dec that must have saturated my pile and then it froze solid.

We also had a colder than average winter and my poor pile has been slow to thaw this spring.

I know it's been frozen since late last Nov, because the pumpkins I put in there at that time are still pretty much intact.

It took a little more effort to empty the icy pile and I then tossed the frozen chunks on a tarp and let them melt for most of the day before refilling the bin.