Vermont Spring.

4-29-23 VERMONT: Yesterday when we arrived, it was in the sixties and sunny. We walked around and found—no snow. Some of the early flowers are out. Snowdrops and crocus are almost done. The ponds are full and draining, the waterfall is splashing and babbling. Frog eggs are abundant in both ponds, and the frog opera is playing nightly. Today is rainy and in the fifties.

I put away the reflectors that guide the driveway snow plowers and the snow shoveling gear. I repaired a small section of collapsed stone wall in the middle terrace bed. If you don’t do it now, it doesn’t get done because everything starts to grow. The lawn guys did the yard clean up, but not the beds. There is a lot of pruning to do around the house, shrubs damaged by snow falling off the roof. 

We walked around the pasture with the dogs. There’s standing water in all the hollows. We can walk anywhere because it was mowed in the fall, and nothing has grown more than an inch of so.

The usual customers swarmed the feeders after I filled them, including a very golden goldfinch. I thought I saw a hummingbird, so I made the sugar-water and put their feeders out. Robins are busy on the lawn.

New blooms: daffodil, wild ginger, vinca, blood root, forsythia, pulmonaria, hellebore, primrose.

The waterfall in action.

Foxy friend is still around.

Forsythia has finished in NJ, but is at peak here.

Hellebore is a reliable early bloomer and thrives in the shade.

A mid-April pic of the pond with no ice and two turtles sunning on a flat rock.