Best March ever!

As of today, this month is on track to be the warmest March on record here where I live with an average temperature of 49°. I am loving it!
The daffodils are in full bloom, and the tulips should be very soon! Rhubarb is up, and so are the chives!
There is little else as fine as a baked potato with the first chives of the spring on it! Yum!
I already have radishes sprouting in the garden, and the weather shows no sign of changing too much. Since radishes don't mind cool weather, it can drop down quite a bit and I'm betting they'll still do fine. I also planted broccoli directly in the garden. I was all set to start it in pots, but thought "Why? It will grow outside just as fast, maybe faster, than in pots" ... so I also planted that! I put in some spinach too. All these like cooler weather, and in the past when I've waited during mild springs, I've regretted it because all of a sudden it would get too hot and they'd all bolt and I'd get nothing. I figured I'd go a different route this year, after all, it's just a few seeds and I can always replant if we do get a major snow storm or something!
I have a lot of cleaning out to do too. It appears my strawberry patch has been over run with weeds and only a few plants have survived, so I'll be digging those out and relocating them, then removing the mass amount of weeds. They never did well in that spot anyway.
My blueberry bushes are looking pitiful. They should be 5 feet tall by now, and they're only about 3 feet tall. I am not buying anything from that company again, too many bad experiences. They replaced the bushes when they failed to grow, but only after I could prove to them when I'd bought them and sent back the original packing materials and the original receipt and the original shipping label. Such a hassle, but thankfully I had kept all that after reading their return policy. The new bushes are growing, but not nearly as well as they should be.
Now, our last frost free date is April 27 here, so I am really pushing it, but I like living on the edge! lol! The lilacs are all leafy, and they know better than I when spring has sprung, so I'm going with them. We'll see how my bet pays off!

Dreaming of summer and warmer weather

Picture of Bee Balm from my garden 2008
In January, in Wisconsin, it is cold, the days are short and everything is white or gray, even the sky on most days. So in the summer, when my garden is in bloom, I take lots of pictures! Now, I open them and look at them to remind myself that soon it will be warm again ... and everyone will switch from complaining about the cold to complaining about the heat! But it's all good ... the bugs, the bees even the mosquitoes! In January I welcome the thought of slapping away mosquitoes just as in July a snowfall sounds wonderful! Like everything it's all a matter of perspective. I know right now as we up here in the north have had enough of the snow, ice and cold there are people in the south who are thrilled when it snows! So, Wisconsin is, and always will be, the land of changes. In the last week alone the temperature has varied by as much as 70 degrees! By the end of summer it possibly will be 140 degrees warmer than it was this past week. Crazy to think about, but true! From -40 to 100 ... that's Wisconsin!