I swear it was just a few weeks ago that I was staring wistfully out this very door, waiting impatiently for the snow to melt so I could start planting.

How time flies.

And how badly I’ve done at updating the garden.

This year was…well, just not a good year for the garden.  Over the fourth of July weekend this summer, we decided that we were going to move.   This meant moving before the garden finished producing, and since we need to restore the lawn when we moved out, I stopped watering and taking good care of the garden.  Basically, I harvested what was harvestable, but stopped nurturing tender sproutlings, thinking I was going to be yanking them out before they really produced.

*Sigh*

Then we changed our minds, but by then the damage had been done, and I got a really small yield out of my tomato plants and really, everything else.  The end result was that at least everything was finished being harvestable during reasonable weather, so that Andy could actually take out the gardens.  It stayed warm long enough for quite a bit of grass to grow in- not surprising at all, given how much grass tried to take over the garden this year!

So the ground is fully at rest now, thanks to a 14-inch layer of snow dumped overnight.

The great news about this- the snow will insulate the ground, and provided it stays, the frost line should be very, very shallow this year.  We really only had a few days of hard cold before the snow hit- this means great things for the spring to come.  This means that when spring does announce it’s arrival, the snow will melt and have a ground to sink into instead of rolling about creating muck. It means my husband will be able to go to work early, and well, as much as I dislike the snow- this is a great thing for next spring.

Next spring will be a whole new adventure, as it is our intention to move at the end of this winter.  I’m looking forward to our new yard and making plans.  Right now, all I can do is plan varieties, as we don’t know the where part of moving yet.  But oh, those seed catalogs will start rolling in any day now, and I can dream.

I can dream of spring, and I can dream of digging in the dirt and nurturing seeds- and somewhere in here, I’ll get to actually start some seeds.

But I will be patient this year, and next year I expect I’ll be rewarded with the garden I’ve been striving for the past four years.  I can’t wait to share.