Well, it's been a week...OY has it been a week!

Hello! Sheesh, we made it through the polar vortex. We were among the lucky who didn't lose power although we were asked for a couple days to turn the furnace down and turn the lights off, and not to use the washer or dryer during the daytime. Mostly we did The Hibernating and stayed inside. Yesterday there was still six inches of snow in the backyard. Today it hit 40 and I took the dog out without putting a coat on either of us.

Still too much snow for me to get to the greenhouse.

The calendulas I planted in my first tray of six packs are in the laundry room. No sproutage yet.

All the seedlings have been moved to my kitchen counter and lights set up. It's gone from being dismally dark to being the bright corner! True leaves are starting to show everywhere.

The extreme cold has done a number on me, physically, and so I'm behind on starting new seeds and potting up the seedlings. It's not going to be reliably warm for a while anyway. The good news is that the slow melting of the snow means it sinks in rather than running down the driveway to the street, so when I start laying cardboard for my garden floor, the land will be well-watered.

Snow!!

I finished the seed inventory. Have many more packets of seeds than I expected! My warm season seeds are all three or four years old now, but my cool season seeds will have to come first. All the carrots and beets are four years old and given they take a month to germinate, I need to replace them quickly just in case they don't germinate after all. That does, of course, call for different varieties just in case they DO germinate!

I don't have enough greens and I seriously don't have enough snow peas. Not certain anyone can ever have enough snow peas! But I was tickled to discover that I had already ordered wild strawberry seeds. Really hoping they'll do well.

Everything came to a halt for two reasons. The first was a very much needed grocery shopping trip, which took everything I had. The second was four inches of snow that night. Interestingly, there was--still is!--snow on every surface in the yard except the greenhouse. Evidently the slant of the roof is so steep that it all slid off without sticking. I won't be going into the snow to check on it as I'm disabled and don't wish to take any chance at all on falling, so this will be a good test of how well the greenhouse does when temps at night are well below freezing and the gardener is well below blankets.