The snow that’s left now lies mostly in disconnected curves and crescents, where our plow service banked its savings at the ends of the driveway and cleared a space to the mailbox. This plowing is done by a woman who is a landscaper in the summer half of the year, and it shows in the careful edges of her beautiful plowing. Then the county street plow comes along and throws the sandy, icy detritus from the road all over her beautiful work. Then the mailman, who in this case is a mailwoman, leaves a note in the mailbox pointing out that she can’t drive right up to it and that this won’t do. So then Doug goes out with a snow shovel and moves the road snow somewhere inoffensive.

I can see from the upstairs window that he won’t have to do that again this season. I’m tending my seedlings in their new, experimental pots, because during the pandemic we switched to getting milk delivered in glass bottles, so I no longer have all those paper cartons for seed starting. Last year I had a motley bunch of trays, but this year I bought some very fancy, reusable silicone potting sets. I’m going to see how they compare to the empty egg cartons and random leftover bedding pots I had lying around.

The indoor Cobra tomatoes I started in big pots in the window downstairs are two feet tall now, and developing their first flowers. I calculate this means tomatoes by Memorial Day. Maybe next year I’ll start them earlier and have tomatoes for, oh, Mardi Gras or something. I’ll put on my green and purple glass beads and have a BLT with my paczki.

Speaking of Lent, Hellebores are also called Lenten Roses, since they bloom at the appropriate time. Mine are a little late starting this year, but there’s still plenty of Lent left for them to catch up. I went out this afternoon to cut away some of the old leaves, and this as my reward. Hello, little flowers. Little signs of hope. Welcome to the needy world.