April Brings the Sweet Spring Showers…

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January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.

February’s ice and sleet
Freeze the toes right off your feet.

Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wert not so unkind!

April brings the sweet spring showers,
On and on for hours and hours.

Farmers fear unkindly May
Frost by night and hail by day.

June just rains and never stops
Thirty days and spoils the crops.

In July the sun is hot.
Is it shining? No, it’s not.

August, cold and dank and wet,
Brings more rain than any yet.

Bleak September’s mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood.

Then October adds a gale,
Wind and slush and rain and hail.

Dark November brings the fog
Should not do it to a dog.

Freezing wet December, then
Bloody January again!

January brings the snow …

I hope that’s been helpful to those of you planning your holidays. Now they’re very useful, travel tips. Despite all you may have heard to the contrary, the rain in Spain stays almost invariably in the hills. Oh dear, what a weather this is. Still, it was very nice yesterday, wasn’t it? Spring, I enjoyed that. Missed it last year, I was in the bathroom.

(A family favorite from Flanders and Swann – The Weather Song, 195?)

What should we do for the garden in April?

 

Farewell to Winter

 

 

We are in-between seasons now – a lot of snow is still hanging around, the ground is frozen and pond-size puddles abound.

However, Spring is in the air. We are itching to get outside and do something – anything – that will rid us of the last of the winter cobwebs and allow us to get up to our elbows in Nature.

So what’s a gardener to do in April in Zone 3b?

• Empty and clean nest boxes – repair as needed.
• Build bee houses
• Pruning, but not your elms!
• If you are still unfortunate enough to have lawn, lightly rake through any snowmold that may appear.
• If you haven’t begun yet – seeding indoors for vegetables and more.

What are you doing this month?

Sunday Garden Links

As a semi-regular feature of this blog, I will be providing a roundup of some of the interesting articles that I come across in the previous week. Some will be plucked from my Google Reader subscriptions and all will be pertinent to the subjects I cover (or would like to cover) in Zone 3b.

It’s Spring!

Isn’t it?

• I have been expressing my cabin fever rather poorly – see how the Garden Ms. breaks loose in Mad as a March Hare at Gardening with Latitude
• And Calgarians? Forget about the joys of Spring, they’re celebrating Sprinter in Why snow at the end of March isn’t such a bad thing… really!
• Unicorns, apricots, plans, pi….What???“Is it SPRING yet?” she said with some desperation in her voice.

On a more serious note…

• Alberta is the only area in North America still populated with healthy elm trees – read why in - All About Elms and STOPDED from Garden Buzz
• If we can’t stop urban sprawl then we must at try by Helping Our Planet One Garden at a Time, from CWF

And some one has been breaking the rules and has forsaken their own garden for a trip to warmer climes…

• A Fine Home For Tarzan
  from Garden Buzz

Enjoy!

The Garden in March – Updated

Edmonton.

23 March, 2011.

Spring is unleashed…

Early morning…the dew on the grass, Daffodils blooming, crocus carpet the ground as far as the eye can see, the twitter of songbirds …

Maybe in Vancouver!

*Added correct download 24/03/2011

(Photos by Yuet Chan. Slide Show produced by moi in Microsoft Photo Story 3. Music segment: Di Melody Of Mei-Hua-San-Long. Di Solo performed by  Zeng Zhao-Bin)

It’s Spring! We can start planting now…

What to plant outside on the first day of Spring in Zone 3b?

Snow Peas
Arctic Tomatoes

Winter squash, perhaps?