Sunny and in the low seventies. You could not ask for a more perfect day and I had the afternoon off. First I got out the chainsaw and took care of the split live oak that met its demise in the snowstorm. It’s funny how trees on the ground seem to have so much more bulk than they do when standing. I cut a little of it up in the right lengths for firewood and added it to the wood pile. But mostly it was too small. It will have to go out to the curb for trash pickup.

Next I went to the vegetable garden. We don’t have a tiller and we usually just rent one for jobs like this. But the ground still seemed very soft and it’s not really a very big garden. It’s a raised bed and the soil has been heavily amended. I got out the garden fork. When I held it a couple feet off the ground and dropped it the tines sank in all the way to the wooden shaft. I decided to try turning the ground by hand with the fork. That wound up being a little more of a task than I was really in shape for, and by the time I was finished I was ready to sit down and have some tea.

There still is not much blooming yet in the flower beds. The quince blossoms seem to have survived the snow rather well and the bees were out visiting them again this afternoon. The only other flowers were the candytuft (Iberis sempervirens) which also survived the snow.