April feels like March

I am convinced the calendar is off. This is March, not halfway through April. The weather has been alternating between welcoming warmth and cold and dreary. The winds are stronger than I remember from previous years. The grass is starting to green up and all the spring flowers are in bloom. All that describes the month of March.
Yet, the calendar insists that today is tax day, that agreed-upon deadline to settle up with our government. Since tax day is always in the middle of April, it can’t be March. We have filed our tax returns and can forget about it for another year. Still, it doesn’t feel like April.
On one of the warm days last week, I cleaned out the garden and planted onions. They can withstand a bit of cold as can the radishes I put in with them. I bought beet seeds even though the ones I planted last year were little more than exercise incentives for the black squirrels that kept digging them up. I haven’t planted the scarlet orbs yet, as I am still devising ways to hide them from the squirrels.
There are other cold season crops such as spinach, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, to name a few. I hated spinach as a child. It was always served as a slimy green mess that stunk to high heaven. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was delicious before it was cooked. Spinach salad is one of the treats of the season.
I discovered shallots a few years ago and plan to pick up some sets the next time I visit my favorite nursery. They go well with snow peas. Both can also be planted this early in the season. Interestingly, I dislike regular garden peas. They taste too much like the nasty vegetables of my youth.
The warm days entice me to go outside and plan for a superb garden. The bugs and other critters that dine on the crops are in hiding in hopes that I plant lots of yummy things for them.
I have already picked up a couple bags of trash out of the yard. If you have lost a blue Mr. Potato Head T-shirt, it will be in the side yard for a couple more days before I toss it in to the trash, so if you want it, don’t wait too long to rescue it. Our shrubs tend to collect anything that falls on the grass or blows by.  As soon as I clean out their treasures, the wind blows and offers them more trash to collect. They are especially fond of anything made of plastic. I wasn’t aware that they were a fan of Mr. Potato Head.
In addition to cleaning up the yard and getting started on the garden, I am about halfway through the spring cleaning. This is farther than I have gotten in previous years. Something always comes up and I abandon the project in favor of more pleasant tasks. If it really were only March, I would be ahead of schedule but since the calendar insists it is April, I am on the verge of falling behind.
No matter what the calendar says, the seasons are changing. We are waking up from the lethargy of winter and entering into the season of renewed energy. Be it March or April, it is time to get outside and breathe fresh air. It is time to clear out the cobwebs of winter and feel the sun on our faces once more. And it is time to finally toss out that T-shirt lying in the grass.[[In-content Ad]]