Spring Cleaning

It's Groundhog Day and apparently we will have an early Spring.  Virginia seems to have taken Punxutawney Phil to heart, because the weather today is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l!  65 degrees, sunny, and mildly breezy.  So in honor of that, and in horror of the mud, I kicked off my shoes and mopped the kitchen floor.  (And you are blogging about that??)

See, the mud had apparently gotten completely out of hand.  Yesterday I looked at my kitchen floor in disgust; the dogs had tracked muddy paw prints all over.  I was disgusted with my dogs.   But as I wiped those prints up, I discovered that what I thought was the color of the linoleum, was actually a nasty, red-brown skim-coat of dried mud.  And I walk barefoot on that floor!  I was now disgusted with myself.

So, yes, I mopped the floor.  Three times, actually.  What was once nasty, is now lovely.  And I am keeping the Swiffer Wet Jet next to the door so that I can immediately clean up the mud prints from now on.  I have been doing well on other self-made-promises this year; I am fairly confident I can keep this one, too.

Spring is coming, folks.  I have a clean floor to prove it.

Bare Root Planting

Life is swinging back towards normal and I have scraped away a little time to update the blog.

My older child came home from the hospital yesterday following a successful surgery the day before.  Now I am just fighting to keep him calm and sedentary as he heals.  He feels fine, and I am relieved.  With both kids stuck in the house for the next 5 days straight, though, I felt it was time for me to head outside! 

The Arbor Day Foundation finally delivered my hazelnut bushes last week, so those got planted right away.  Right now they just look like twigs sticking up out of the ground, so no pictures yet.  But next year they should start looking like this:

but, you know, with just three.

And then yesterday, at long last, my other trees arrived.  But we have had below freezing temps since the hazelnuts were planted.  In fact, it snowed the day after I planted them.  So I have been worried that the trees arrived too late and would die when planted in the cold, cold ground.

However, it seems that this is all part of the Arbor Day Foundation's master plan, because bare-root trees and shrubs can be planted in winter, as long as the ground isn't frozen solid.  It seemed counter-intuitive to me, though.  I am used to planting trees that have a large root ball.  Have you ever seen bare-root trees before?  They look naked and alien!  Couple that with the nice notice that came from Arbor Day that said that every minute a bare root is exposed to air increases the chances for disease or death to the tree, and it seems like a lost cause. 

But I really didn't have a choice.  So today I took a leap of faith and planted two sour cherry trees,

an Early Richmond 

 and a Montmorency, 

and a Red Maple that came free with my order.  I hope I didn't kill them by trying to save them!

I also have two more forsythia to be planted, also free from Arbor Day, but my luck ran out with them.  The ground really is frozen solid where I had planned to plant them.  I will give it a try tomorrow when it warms up above freezing again.

For now, I am going to spend some time with the kids, start dinner, and start some holiday baking!