A test walk on some quarry trails. Right now most trails are 60% covered with lumpy hard ice especially where feet have walked through it and it has a light coating of new snow. So unless you walk like a constipated penguin or you are wearing Korkers you may be sitting on your ass.
The frozen waterfalls are about a 3 on a scale of one to ten. Pretty cool and maybe if you got them in a nice morning light but right now so-so. In a week or so the trails will be impassable mud. A new layer of snow to ski on or another polar vortex would liven them up but who wants that? I might wait until there is witch hazel blooming. In fact there is some witch hazel blooming in the backyard and the forsythia I cut last week is blooming like crazy in the kitchen!
It would be jumping the gun to cut the wrap off the boat but a few weeks more and who knows? I still plan on planting peas on Saint Patrick’s even if I have to shovel snow. As traditional as bootin’ green beer!
Send in your April 1 Restaurant openings. Publishing them is the only way to drive the evil polar vortex away.
Good Morning Gloucester 
Very nice shot here – before the thaw and the ice is holding on. thanks 🙂
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great post, Paul!
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Wow! We always plant the peas by the 18th of April so we can have them with our salmon on the 4th of July! You inspire me!
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Your peas are lucky if you plant them on Saint Patrick’s Day. A little googgling and yup, here we are, from gardens alive:
I know—you might not like the idea of putting anything in the ground really early in the season. But there are two very good reasons to get peas in the ground on March 17th:
1) They ARE called “SPRING Peas” for a reason: Peas are NOT a summer crop. As soon as it gets hot, the vines wither up and depart this mortal coil. If you wait till it seems a reasonable time to plant, your vines may shrivel and die just as the first peas are ready for picking. It’s a lot like going back to dating in High School. And
2) …one of the great superstitions of gardening is that is it LUCKY to plant peas on St. Patrick’s Day. And as you probably know all too well, we gardeners NEED that luck much much more than normal people.
So–it’s the right time AND it’s lucky—you’re already two points ahead of your normal score! (No matter WHAT, plant by April 1st or you’re wasting your time–and the peas’.)
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