>'Tis spring, finally. This was a really wacky winter here -- no snow to speak of before New Year's Day (0.7 inches) and then nasty after that. I have been taking a couple of walks daily and everyone is smiling, pleased that it is behind us. I like it this way. I suppose it makes me countercyclical with so many people moving south and west. My view is that weathering the winters makes the other three seasons sweeter.

Well then I'll enjoy this spring, if it ever comes, enormously. Wife and I have cut and chopped 7 m³ of firewood (plus some left over from the last winter), about half of it now neatly stacked in the basement, just finished this weekend. The seedlings for most of the plants are ready but can't take them out there yet, it's too cold. The fruit trees are blooming, but there are no bees, it's too cold.

This winter wasn't too cold, the temperatures didn't go below about -12^oC (we had -26 in february 2012), but it was too long, still is. We usually don't get much snow in december, perhaps a few centimeters and then it goes away in a few days. This winter, we got 60cm on 8th of december and it stayed for weeks, then got snow several times more, with maybe just couple of weeks without snow on the ground. The last of it thawed on 31st of march, which is pretty much extending the snow season from the usual ten weeks to sixteen. The noon temperature this week is still hovering around 10^oC, when it should be around 18-22.