Easter parade

I couldn't have asked for better weather for the Easter break. It got increasingly warm and sunny over the course of the weekend.

The bees don't have many open flowers to visit at the moment, so these anemones growing in the cracks of the paving at the front of our house were proving popular:

And the daffodils are finally starting to open - a full month later than the earliest I've seen them (in 2012). I think they're a bit shorter than normal, too. The last of the ice melted from the lake on Saturday (April 19th) - definitely the latest we've seen it still frozen.

I spent the whole weekend either cooking or gardening. All the tomatoes and peppers were transplanted into pots in the greenhouse (208 tomato plants and 34 peppers this year) and I dug dandelions by the dozen out of three of the vegetable beds.

The children gathered up all the bits of tree which had fallen during the ice storm - we'll turn those into woodchips for chicken litter. We didn't lose too many large branches near the house, but up by the hayfield is another matter. There are several fairly large ash trees up there which look like this one:

I think Mike is going to be busy with his chainsaw when the ground dries out!