What a difference! I'm north of Portland, but we've had many beautiful sunny days. I mean BEAUTIUFUL, in the 50's, dry air. Since Spring is generally wet, I welcomed the rain as I think it will stimulate my perennials to emerge. Wow. What different conditions for regions that are so close! According to my solar panel data, this April has been sunnier than last April.

My 'kids' are furry and purr, but they are also going stir crazy from the weather. We get the usual going round to all the doors to make sure it is raining outside all of them. Hey, you don't know. Maybe it is only raining on the north side. Has that actually ever happened in all of feline history?

Unlike last week, I do currently have a full garbage can of rose clippings. So I'm done with gardening for the week.

Here just north of Concord, NH, it has been 10-15 degrees below normal and has often been raining or windy or just raw and damp. I have only had perhaps 3 or 4 days in the whole month that I wanted to work outside. And I have painters starting late this week, so on Wednesday, the only nice day this week, I have to finish moving obelisk trellises and pruning shrubs so their access is reasonable.

I am truly worried that we will move from in the forties to in the 70’s and 80’s over the course of just a couple of weeks and miss spring entirely.

The one bright spot is that I have daffodils where a single clump has been blooming since the first week of April, so a full four weeks. They last far longer in this cool weather.

I did notice over the weekend that it has been so windy that the soil was quite dry as I worked to prep the veggie garden and started planting the onions.

Deanna, your weather sounds much better than ours has been.

I agree, we've had a lot of cloudy, wet, sometimes raw days. We've also had a lot of wind. We had one day of such strong winds, that we had a large branch snap off of our front mature Maple Tree, and that hasn't happened in all the time we've lived here. And it's the fact that we've had so many windy days, that I really notice. That seems very different than most springs.

At the same time - I don't believe we have had that much accumulation. Rainy and wet, but not a lot of rain coming down. This past couple of days, we had more rain than any one rain event we had all month. And I'm looking at my Maple Trees and the leaf buds are looking very sparse. I have memories of very full Maples in the past, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, that I'm still going to have a good amount of coverage of leaves on the Maples. It was a very dry winter.

I agree, that unlike other springs, where we had early warm days, and my bulbs didn't last long at all, this year, the bulbs have been going strong for a good month, longer really. The crocus was just about on time this year about the middle of March, so I've been having 6 weeks of bloom from bulbs. So that is definitely a silver lining.

And, with all these rainy days keeping the surface of the soil moist, I'm already seeing quite a bit of germinating seedlings. I'm waiting to see what they all turn into. Some Alyssum, some Cleome...I'm hoping there is a lot of both. On the other hand, I will have to keep my eye on developing weeds. We're probably going to have a bumper crop.

Perhaps it's just perception and our weather has been similar to yours, but my perception certainly is different! There have been so many beautiful days we've been going on walks and enjoying the sunshine. We have been windy, but this time of year is always windy for us as the winds shift from north to south. There is always spring wind off the water. The wind is most likely keeping our soil drier like you said, NHBabs. Hadn't thought of that. Maybe I'm just enjoying the walks outside because everybody is bored. While our day-to-day school life hasn't changed, the kids miss seeing friends at activities in the afternoon and each day tends to blur into the next in the quietness. It's nice, but I had never aspired to the hermit lifestyle. The sunshine was appreciated!