Lisa, I split my time between the indoors and the outdoors, cleaning house for much of the day but also prepping the onion bed for planting and carrying some plants out of the house and greenhouse and into real, actual sunshine for part of the day. I hope they enjoyed the sunlight as much as I did.

I've been working on garden cleanup fairly steadily the last few weeks, prior to the snow, so don't have much left to do. Our ground is horribly muddy and squishy and wet, so I couldn't do much today, but the puddles dried up significantly today so that likely means I can do more outdoors tomorrow.

Your tiny blue flowers might be one of the native speedwells, perhaps Birdseye speedwell. That's what I have blooming in blue this early in the year. Or, perhaps, bluets. I usually see them in March. I haven't seen any bluets yet, but birdseye speedwell was blooming here in mid-February, back when the weather was nice and warm before the two back-to-back snow and sleet storms arrived.

It is amazing what a difference a couple of days makes. At mid-week we had a layer of ice covered with a layer of sleet covered with a layer of fine, powdery snow. Today we have a green yard, several kinds of wildflowers (spring beauties, dandelions, birdseye speedwell and a couple of others) in bloom, the first open blooms on one of the plum trees and daffodils in bloom. They actually were blooming before it snowed and are a little droopy today but I expect they'll bounce back.

It was a gorgeous day and I hated spending part of it indoors cleaning house, but it needed to be done. I hope to spend more time outdoors tomorrow even though our weather won't be as nice tomorrow as it was today. Our ground was so squishy and wet that cleaning house made more sense than squishing my way around the yard all day long and tracking more mud into the mudroom to track up the freshly mopped floor. I guess I need to dig up my all-terrain Crocs from the bottom of the closet and start wearing them as they are so easy to clean off when muddy.

I also potted up some seedlings and sowed more seeds indoors. Either tomorrow or the next day I hope to move all the plants currently indoors on the light shelf to the green house so I'll have a lot of open shelf space to start warm-season flowers and herbs.

Dawn, yes, I think it is probably the speedwell...or at least in that family. Ugh, I need to clean the house too...somehow that just rarely hits the top of the list of "I really have to do this today." :)

I did the house work during the last snow... and went on a nice 25 mile bike ride today.

Tough to decide, bike or garden... :)

Moni I bet that was fun after being cooped up with snow and ice.

It was awesome getting out in the garden playing in the soil to see what I have in my new space. It was moist but not wet. We got a 30 x 30 area ready and hope to borrow a tractor to finish the garden area.

Moni, I have cats and dogs who seem to shed hair and dirt daily, so I never have a day without vacuuming, mopping and/or sweeping. I can wear out a Swiffer WetJet faster than anyone else we know. Gardening is more fun, for sure, but taming the pet hair and dirt is essential to my happiness, too. (And, for anyone who wonders, pet hair can go on your compost pile.) I know that having pets that come indoors is a lot more work than having only outside pets, but outside pets wouldn't stand a chance here at night with all the wildlife we have roaming around.

Kim, We still are awfully wet, but that is the nature of dense clay soil, and it is one reason I have so many raised beds. There are years we stay too wet for me to plant anything until May except for the raised beds. I'm planting onions this afternoon, and maybe some lettuce and cool-season annual flowers as well. The bees have been visiting the annual flowers that still are in plant flats, even flying into the greenhouse to visit them, so I'd like to get the flowers in the ground. There's only three flats of them, so planting them won't take any time at all after I finish planting my 5 bundles of onions.

I am worried the rain we get today, tonight and tomorrow will wipe out what little progress we've made towards drying out, but it is meteorological spring and, as far as I'm concerned, that means it is spring so I expect rain, mud, goop and glop. All too soon, the dry season will arrive and I'll be wishing to have back all the icky, squishy mud that clings to the shoes and animal paws because mud is better than dust if you're a gardener.

I have that mucky mud at home but in town its a totally different soil.. I went to Lubbock today and came home with only 1 tree and 1 package of seeds. Very unusual for me.

I cut seed potatoes and wished I could plant my onions.

I haven't touched the garden for fear it will just rain and make it muddier before I can get the onions in the ground.

took a drive over to one of the pastures and seen some fencing that will need repaired real soon. I don't have any livestock in there but will need to rotate them soon.

Sharpened up my chainsaws and will be getting my tools and supplies gathered up for fence duty.

I'm falling behind at a rapid pace.

I planted my onions yesterday afternoon and also two flats of cool season annuals, a mixture of sweet alyssum and violas, and some dianthus, which are perennial here. The pathways still were extremely wet, so I crouched carefully on my gardener's knee pads (I put one right on top of the other to try to stay drier longer, and it worked.) and I didn't get too wet or muddy. Because I had cultivated the top couple of inches of soil in the raised bed on Saturday, it had dried out fairly well up there, though the soil below that was still just as muddy as could be. Luckily, you plant onions shallowly, so they went into the drier soil although the flowers, planted more deeply, will have to deal with the mud. I'm not real worried about them. We shouldn't have more soil moisture right now than they can handle, and hopefully this week's rain won't change that.

We had fog/mist all night, but it hasn't added up to much in the rain gauge yet. The bulk of the rain overnight stayed to our south and southeast. I am sure we'll get more rain today and tonight and then tomorrow it will be too muddy to do anything again. Spring must be here. Mud season.

Robert,

I'm cutting my seed potatoes today and then will put them in a cool room to heal and to sprout for a few days. They go into the tallest raised beds at the sandier soil northwestern corner area of the garden, so I hope to have them in the ground before the end of the week. It just depends on how much rain falls. If I was going to have to plant them into a clay area, I wouldn't have even cut them because my clay is 100% saturated and about the consistency of wet cement.

It hurts to start out falling behind, but with the big cold winter weather spell we had, and with the ground so wet for the last few weeks, falling behind is to be expected. We'll deal with it the same way we deal with everything else: with lots of whining and complaining....no, wait, I meant with strength of character and perseverance. I feel like I am always behind during planting season, but definitely feel further behind than usual right now.