April Fools Me

Once the calender rolls over to April, it's usually safe to say Spring has arrived even though it's technically 10 days in. Weather-wise is another matter as we look forward to the first weekend in April and temperatures forecast to be in the 40's with rain/snow showers. Luckily, we had a few nice days during the week which allowed us to get some yard work done. I even got the lawn mower out to give it the obligatory first start of the season and fired up the grill for hamburgers last night. Nonetheless, it looks like the first full weekend of Spring is going to be a dud in the weather department.

This year we need to rotate our garden 90 degrees. The northern part hardly gets any sun so we want to set the garden east-west this year. This, of course, requires some work. Fortunately, I have a father in-law who has this great little Gravely with a tiller. That thing turns up the soil well.

As for the rest of the yard, general maintenance is a chore. I've cleared some land over the past few years so while the yard looks nicer it gives me more grass to cut. I don't mind it so much as long as we don't have a wet summer. Some of the grass in the sunny areas seems to grow about two inches a week; with or without rain to help it.

Hopefully the warm weather will arrive before June 23, unlike 2003 when it seemed like it rained almost straight through from around May 20th to June 23rd with very few days above 75 F. How about 59 on June 4th or 65 on June 21st? Yuck. That was horrible. Many days during that span were around 10 degrees off from the normal high. Some were closer to 20 degrees off. I hope this first weekend is not an augury of another Spring that's a flop.