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| This was the scene last week: heaps of snow... not very interesting -- or very spring-like! |
Hello! Spring is progressing here in Iowa, more or less. In order to get rid of winter and usher in springtime, there are specific steps that need to happen:
- Temperatures above freezing (sunshine nice too)
- Get rid of snow
- Warm the soil
- Life stirs within the soil, and plant growth begins!
We've finally been making some progress in these steps, after a long, cold winter in which we still had the same snow on the ground for at least six weeks. Temperatures just never got warm enough to melt it entirely, so we still had large piles of snow everywhere, like the pile in the first picture.
This past week was finally warm and sunny, and also very windy for a few days, which really helped melt the snow and dry up the soggy ground.
Time lapse photography:
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| Friday, March 8 (this is how my Paradise Garden has looked pretty much all winter). |
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| Monday, March 11 (Things are looking promising!) |
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| Tuesday, March 12 (A good day's progress...) |
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| Wednesday March 13 (Almost there...) |
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| Thursday, March 14 (Yay!) |
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| Friday, March 15 (The wind has even dried things off.) |
It was lovely to watch the daily progress of getting rid of the snow and ice, after living with them for so long. We all sat on the sunny front porch yesterday in our bare feet (a literal rite of spring that we look forward to every winter), and talked about how much we loved a St. Patrick's Day that was warm, sunny and NOT snowy. The 10-day forecast called for NO snow in the next week and a half.
But what greeted me this morning??
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| This! |
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| Back to the drawing board..... (The sidewalks were too warm already for the snow to stick, though.) |
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| Yes, it's beautiful. |
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| In fact, it doesn't even look like real snow, but more like Hollywood studio snow. The phrase "magic snow" came to my mind as I walked around seeing how it coated everything with such picturesque clumps. |
The new snow is already melting as soon as the sun shines on it. It'll probably be gone by tomorrow or the next day, as the temps are forecast to be in the mid-forties today and the fifties for the rest of the week. And sunny every day! (We'll see if those weathermen redeem themselves with some
accurate forecasts....)
Spring is coming, despite our brief, and quite picturesque, setback. The bulbs are poking up in a few warmest spots. I hear birds chirping once again. And the sunshine is so lovely and warm. I'm so enjoying this beginning of springtime.
I hope you also are enjoying the unfolding of spring in your own gardens. Thanks for reading! -Beth
