It's snowing here in PA today. This spring has just been awful so far. I would normally have all my seedlings out in the cold frame by now, but I had to set up grow lights and turn my woodworking shop into a temporary nursery. Its really a pain. I sometimes wonder if the Volcano eruptions earlier this year contributed to the crappy spring. Anyway, I cope by not watching the weather report and not looking outside lol. Meditation also helps.

My seedlings -- mostly tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and some brassicas and lettuces -- are languishing indoors now, even under lights. As you know, we've had a very few, very nice "teaser" days here and there in between the cold rainy ones and the flurries. I keep telling myself it can't be much longer until we have consistent warmth and sun, but then it is. I cope by drawing up ever more elaborate garden plans and adding to my list of projects to undertake -- when the weather is nice! Otherwise reading, cooking, watching my "backyard pets" (wild birds and critters and the neighbor's cats) from inside, some paper crafts.

I have an interest in geology and study it a little informally, but I was unaware that there was significant volcanic activity this year. I would think that an eruption would have to be on the scale of Krakatoa's to have any climatic effect, and even then it would probably amount to little more than pitching lots of particulate matter into the atmosphere, which in turn would probably do little more than produce unusually picturesque sunsets for a year or so. Not certain, but that's what I think. In terms of climate change phenomena, aka "global warming" (we're not hearing that term much anymore, I've noticed, because of conservatives' claims that it's "ideological," but global warming is what it is), my understanding is that climatologists have predicted conditions in the northeast and mid-Atlantic states will become increasingly similar to the Pacific Northwest, and that in fact is what we've seen to be happening the past several years with cooler and wetter springs and the delayed arrival of the more typical heat and humidity of summer. It seems they're less confident about predicting trends for winter, though.