OH Pretty Pretty Pretty. We are a long way from this here. I know at least the end of March for us.

I still have some inside projects I want to do. I did start the spring cleaning this last week. Want the house all crisp and clean and then I am going to create in glass for the next few weeks. Once I get started in the glass project the house can just go on hold. LOL

I did see a couple of inches of the top of my large flower veggie tank in the potager this morning. the snow has settled down some.

Thanks for the great pictures. Warms my heart.

Chris

lavender lass...oh my how beautiful.

I am so ready for spring, it is the most exciting time seeing the crocuses come up first through the snow, then the nurseries get their baby plantlings in...everything begins to wake up and you get your new plants in and everything is lush again.

groan, there's still banks of snow four feet tall on either side of my driveway!

It might not seem like we are having a bad winter, compared to the rest of the country anyway, but it is the second year in a row with temps in the 20s for several days in a row. In a normal winter, maybe 25 (above) a couple of times, which does not devastate the tender plants so much.

But OH YES, I am ready for spring. Our little dachshund girl covers up with a blankey on the sofa, and last night she jumped down, and then brought the blanket with her, to sit on the floor under the dining table. She does not like to get her bum cold! I know she will be glad to run free in the warmth of spring.

We do have buds swelling on the newly planted blueberry bushes, but not much else. Our garden is also taking a beating from the back yard construction going on with the old garage project.

Beautiful flowers! If you had asked me last Saturday, I would have said I was ready for spring. But today is so nice, I think I can wait a while longer. The problem with spring is the wind, and then the horrible heat of summer.

Oh, beautiful beautiful :-) We here in NE upstate NY don't expect all of this to be gone until at least March or April, and maybe later of so many parking lot mountains of snow. Having spent many years on So. California, I love winter here, but it's been particularly hard on all of us and I'm ready for some grass and oh, maybe some daffodils!

Spring only lasts about a week here in FL, and we are just about upon it. I always figure Valentine's Day is the cut-off for frost, although we got burned in March one year. I'm not looking forward to the heat and humidity- our winters are about ideal, as far as I'm concerned.

Truthfully I'm ready for spring as soon as winter comes. I don't like super cold weather, but I try to make the best of it. When it gets in the 30's in February it feels like a heatwave here.

I grew up in South Florida where it is green year round and the only color change we would see was the different colors on the out of State license plates! For that reason, I do like the four season in South Carolina. I truly love the spring bloom and bulbs are my absolute top favorite. Even wisteria gets a break and is appreciated for two or three weeks! I have come to think of the spring bloom as the start of the new year, not some random date in the middle of winter. But that's just me. The spring bloom here nicely coincides with my birthday, around the middle of March, so another good reason to look at that time of year as a new year.

Scott

It is almost time to start indoor planting for flower seeds for early spring here. I used to have a semi-inside, semi porch room in my house on Chippewa before I remodeled my kitchen there. It has a lot of windows, concrete floor under the indoor-outdoor carpet, and a teeny tiny heat vent that barely kept it above freezing. I used this room to start seeds. I used some heat mats to warm the soil. I moved to self-watering systems after I learned that a single day of day of neglect could wither tiny seedlings. I had fluorescent lights that could be raised as the plants grew. Then in 2003, just as I got the system working well, we remodeled that room with the kitchen. The next year I did my growing in the mid-sized bedroom (right next to the bathroom, so close to water). Then Dad moved in and this became his room. The Chippewa house still has Forget-Me-Nots, Scabiosa and Dianthus that I planted from seed.

I have never had a place to grow my flowers and veggies from seed in this newer house. DH got me a little polycarbonate greenhouse cabinet, but I have not used it much. I still have to start seeds indoors for it, then move them out when it gets warmer. This year I think I might use the desk area in the new kitchen to set up some seed-growing. I have these neat little set-ups from Lee Valley

and this more complicated one from Gardener's Supply, except mine is 4 ft long

I have room for one 4-ft growing area, so I am not sure which I will use. I have not mentioned any of this to DH yet, so we will see how it goes with him.

I guess I could try to put it in Dad's former bedroom, but it has a better chance of living if it is where I see it every day. Dad's room is where we staged the kitchen remodel from. My friend and I just rearranged the junk in Dad's room yesterday, getting ready to bring in and assemble the far-infrared sauna we got at Christmas into my craft room. Some of my craft stuff has to live in the closet in there now, since the sauna will take up so much room in my craft room, which is already home to an upright freezer, a 3 ft wide cabinet, and a four foot wide cabinet. We hope to today,bring in the sauna today if we can get the layers of ice off of the front porch.

BTW, for anyone waiting for the final kitchen pics, that project is on hold until we have warm weather. I have one cabinet door to sand and stain, baseboard moldings to buy and stain, and a backsplash to do. I just could not face doing wet saw cuts in a freezing garage!

I like that! I've got tomato seeds planted in pots and plastic cups with plastic wrap over the top. I hope they grow but it doesn't seem like they will get enough light.

Marti, to you have undercounter lights? If they are fluorescent, you have your grow lights! T5 are best - the skinny ones. You just set you seedlings on something that keeps them so they are just below the bulb, and lower them as they grow. That will keep them from getting as leggy as they would otherwise.

You can also pick up a cheap T5 light fixture at Lowes and figure out how to suspend it above your plants using things around the house. Does DH have car jack stands?

Oh, what lovely photos! I'm ready for spring, but our weather seems to be jumping ahead of spring. It was 74 today. What happened to the 50's? My daffodils are blooming, and things are popping up. I need to get in the garden and cut out last year's growth, but I'm certain we'll have one more cold spell.

Nancy, you are a true northern gardener! My DH had his gro stuff set up in the basement, and he has done that for years. Then, when he wanted to garden in Alabama, he had no basement to use, so we had tiny flats sitting everywhere in the sun porch. I did not like the way that looked, and it puzzled me why he needed to start from seed down here. Except for tomatos and peppers maybe, everything else can be direct sowed in the garden, mostly after mid March. I MIGHT let him use part of my Teahouse when it is finished in a couple of weeks at most.

Nancy, I think you are the one who introduced me to Lee Valley, and I check their hardware catalog regularly. They sell good stuff. I can wait for warm weather to see the finishing touches on your kitchen. Just make sure you put in a LOT of pics of the Blum pantry drawers and such.

Nancy, we actually have a grow light (fluorescent) around here somewhere. I don't have any undercounter lights, but I've got all the pots in my windows and they are doing pretty well so far, even the ones facing east.

Definitely ready this year. I do not care much for the winter any more now that my children are grown. Guess I'm getting old. Hearing about everyone starting seeds is motivating me.